The Fine Art of Political Mud Slinging.
It seems like every election there is always some
discussion about negative campaigns. Our own local paper often comes out and
speaks against negative campaigns. It has gotten to a point that if a candidate
questions the actions of his/her opponent, which is fair game they run the risk
of being accused of negative campaigning and mud-slinging.
They try to convince the public that anything negative in a campaign is bad and
people shouldn’t tolerate it. It is as if we are being pre-programmed to get
turned off by anyone who says anything remotely negative or even challenges
their political opponent. I think it is really sad. Candidates have the right to
question each others political ethics, their decisions, and actions. They have a
right to question them, in fact, they have an obligation to the voters to do it.
Someone has to challenge political incumbents for the decisions they have made.
We rely on other candidates to do it because our media will not do it for us.
They are too busy preaching “clean campaign” slogans.
When a “nasty campaign” captures the attention of voters and there is low voter
turn out the media blames the mud-slinging. There is no basis for this
determination. Fact of the matter is low voter turn out is always a problem
regardless of how clean or how dirty the campaigns are. But it sounds good and
it sounds real civilized. Political campaigns are anything but civilized. They
are a winner take all event. It is incumbent on our candidates to tell us who
they are and what they intend to do. Then, they need to up the ante by
challenging the decisions of their opponents. Nothing is served by keeping the
poor decisions or poor choices secret.
It is believable that tough, negative campaigning helps strengthen our leaders,
boosts creativity in policy-making and brings eventual reform to government. I
am not talking about gratuitous personal attacks. I am referring to negative
comments for the purpose of comparison and contrast. The news media and other
self-proclaimed righteous people make no distinction between the two.
Of course personal attacks of the liar, liar pants on fire variety have been
know to turn off voters but at the same time campaigns that contain criticism
with substance can increase the enthusiasm of the entire election.
Governing is full of choices between opposing ideas and often-irreconcilable differences. Any single elected individual must deal with a group whether it be the city council, the police jury, congress or whoever. This requires a certain degree of toughness. If the candidates can weather any attacks during a campaign and still get elected they are considerably stronger for it. There is a world of difference between frivolous personal attacks and purposeful debate of ones political career. We should let the candidates fight it out. Voters should be smart enough to make the distinction between fair criticism and unfairly administered attacks. We should exercise caution as to how we define negative campaigns and what level of negativity that we will tolerate. If a candidate questions the decisions of their incumbent opponent…The incumbent opponent will try to do damage control from the attack and will most certainly counter attack by saying…”Were not going to engage in negative campaigning”. Then turn around and send out people to steal political signs and attempt to smear their opponent using guerilla tactics. There is nothing civilized about elections.
I am of the opinion that it is essential that the opponents
engage in some degree of verbal assaults on each other over the subject of
governing. Let the mud-slinging begin and let me sort through the rhetoric for
myself. I’m a big boy.
By now people should have developed a high threshold for the nastiness of
campaigns. More people watch wrestling than watch ballet…That should tell you
something!
Just my opinion.....yours may vary
Joe