September 25, 2008

editorial

A ruthless campaign

The John McCain presidential campaign is deeply disturbing in its flagrant reliance on inaccuracies, deceptions and fear-based tactics. While Obama has also run misleading ads about his opponent, the McCain campaign has shown itself stunningly ruthless in its march toward the White House. A recent news article in the New York Times highlighted the McCain group’s “demonstrable falsehoods, exaggerations, misconstruals or omissions” that seemed “notable even in a heated presidential campaign.” FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan Website, is a good place to check out these inaccuracies.

What’s most disturbing, however, is that these lies seem to work. Fully half of American voters now believe — after months of ads in which the words “Higher Taxes” flashed across Obama’s image — that Obama will raise taxes on middle class Americans. This assertion is not only false, but the opposite is true. Obama’s proposals would raise taxes only on the 1.9 percent of Americans who make more than $250,000; middle class voters would pay lower taxes than under McCain. This is just one example of falsehoods. Apparently, the McCain campaign strategists, led by Karl Rove protégé Steve Schmidt, assume that voters will believe something simply because it’s repeated over and over. Unfortunately, they seem to be right.

What happened to bring us to this place? What happened to our ability to reason, to analyze sources of information, to tell right from wrong ? Are we too tired to care, or not paying attention? Are we so frightened by economic insecurities that we fall for this manipulation?

This presidential campaign should be an exciting time when voters weigh the merits of competing ideas on how best to address the huge challenges we face, including global warming, health care, the Social Security system, fixing our public education and inner cities and addressing the growth of Islamic extremism. But that debate is not what we’re hearing.

In 40 days we will elect the leader of the most powerful country in a dangerous world. It would be a tragedy if voters make this critical decision based on lies.

—Diane Chiddister