Below you will find a PBS Frontline Special The Choice, which is an in-depth look at the backgrounds and rise of both Presidential candidates. It’s truly an incredible piece and everyone who plans on voting should watch this.
This week as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made their way to Capitol Hill to argue for the passage of their estimated 700 billion dollar package designed to stablize the financial markets what did we hear from our presidential candidates?
Who cares how many cars John McCain owns and what the hell does mum mean? We are in the midst of a financial crisis and all the campaigns can do is air negative ad after negative ad. Last week the Washington Post published a story titled “Recent Obama Ads More Negative Than Rival’s, Study Says.” The article goes on to explain that 77% of Obama’s ads were negative the week after the Republican National Convention while 56% of John McCain’s ads were negative. So, Obama airred more negative ads than John McCain. In total, 30 million dollars was spent between the two campaigns on ads with and it’s possible that almost 20 million of those dollars went to negative campaign advertisements. For me, it doesn’t matter who is airring more negative ads because a few weeks before the Democratic Convention it was the John McCain campaign who was tossing the bigger mud pies.
What matters right now is that in the midst of a financial crisis both campaigns have decided to pummel each other into the ground. At a time when America’s President is publicly taking a back-seat role to a member of his cabinet the only thing that the two men running for the highest office in the land can do is resort to petty attacks. America needs leadership and neither candidate is showing that they are capable of leading. This morning Obama made the statement that he may not even go to Washington to vote on the 700 billion dollar financial package if it looks like it’s a sure thing to pass. Senator Obama might not go to Washington to vote on what could be one of the most significant bills in United States history? What does that say about the way he will lead as President? John McCain has not yet committed to being in DC for the vote? What would it say to the country if neither Presidential candidate went to DC to vote on this bill?
At the same time that these ads are running Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, went on Meet the Press to talk about the crisis. As I watched I found myself saying to myself “man, he sounds presidential.” After I finished watching I went online to watch the latest statements from both candidates and was dissapointed. Neither sounded like a President attempting to address a crisis, they sounded like fools trying to figure out how to fill a sound-bite without saying anything at all. Bloomberg projected an heir of calm detachment. He seemed confident and at ease with the questions and he didn’t sugarcoat the problem.
As I watched Mayor Bloomberg I couldn’t help but wonder why can’t our Presidential candidates talk to us this way? Maybe that’s not what we, the public, is demanding or maybe it’s something else. All I know is that at the end of the day one candidate will win and be faced with cleaning up this mess. My sincere hope is that the performance goes better than the auditons.
Barack Obama “Honor” Ad
John McCain “Education” Ad
Barack Obama and John McCain approve of their respective ads and their campaigns have spent money to produce and air them in keys states. To me, these ads demonstrate what has become the motto of this campaign season “do whatever it takes.” In Obama’s ad he uses journalistic publications to refute unfair claims made by the McCain campaign. The paradox here is that Barack Obama is using a negative campaign ad to combat a flury of negative campaign ads from John McCain’s campaign. McCain’s negative ad misrepresents an Obama policy position. Both of these ads take this election cycle to a new low as Kven Karl Rove observes in the video below.
In sitting down to write this I feel like every other political observer who says “stop the negative attack ads” because they are eating away at the essential fibers of our democracy. The bottom-line is that, as someone who has worked a number of campaigns, negative campaigning is effective in doing two things 1) solidifying a base 2) suppressing voter turnout. Both of these candidates are coming out swinging hoping to get their base in line, keep the other party’s people at home, and convince a few key swing voters to vote for them.
At the end of the day the negative tone of the campaign undermines the core messages of both candidates. John McCain is running as a maverick who will reach across party-lines to “shake up Washington.” Barack Obama is running a a post-partisan figure who doesn’t see people in terms of Democrat and Republican he sees people as Americans (also note that John McCain has also used this line). What is alarming to me in all of this is that it seems that, particularly the John McCain campaign, neither candidate cares that much about running a campaign with a focus on governing.
When I set out to complete a project I take a look at the desired outcomes. I do that by imagining what it will be like to have fulfilled all of my commitments. From there I work backwards to the present, outlining along the way each step that must be completed. The way that I see it, presidential campaigns should also function this way. Candidate should in a”place of success” having fulfilled all of their commitments at eight years as President and work backwards from there. My belief is that if campaigns were planned this way that they would not take on the vitriolic tenor that is currently the norm in presidential elections. Again, to restate my assertion, if campaigns worked backwards from what the candidate wanted to accomplish while in offce then campaigns would look 100% different. I believe that the negative tone of campaigns further reinforces partisan ideologies and identifications, which in turn leads people to feel alienated from one another when they put on their political hat. This idea is similar to what happens when a happy, loving, family sits down for a large family dinner and starts talking about politics. I’ve heard countless stories from friends about family dinners that have gone awry because of disagreements about politics. My opinion is that the reason for this phenomenon is the way in which we run our campaigns. The Democratic and Republican parties air ads that demonize the other side both during election seasons and during off-years. Organizations like MoveOn and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have made people cynical about the process and have played off of emotions as opposed to policy. We use wedge issues like abortion, immigration, and gay marriage to play people against each other. Campaigns take on a “do whatever it takes” strategy and when they get elected they have to govern.
The problem with running campaigns this way is that it creates a more polarized electorate. Elected representatives are responsible to those who elect them and if the electorate is more polarized then it means that the representative will have to appeal to that base in order to get re-elected. This turns into a cycle of pandering and negativity that becomes difficult to break. This campaign season could have been the time where we asked people to put country over party. This could have been an election about issues, about qualifications, about who will do a better job governing, NOT a slug fest over who said what, when, and how. Because of the tone the two presidential campaigns we have lost an opportunity to create a stronger, more vibrant, collaborative democracy. We will all hear over the coming 49 days that we need to put country before party and we will also hear a lot of hateful and negative accusations being thrown across both sides of the aisle. One thing though is clear to me: slogans and promises of America first are hollow because you need to back up your words with actions. Neither candidate is doing what it takes to truly put country overy party.
Maybe if the two candidates had truly laid out a comprehensive strategy for governing both would have seen the impact that their campaigns can have on the political system. While we don’t know who will be sworn in on January, 20 2009 we do know that the political climate will not change much from the last eight years.
The next video is the full interview with Karl Rove. It really drives the point home.
*Note: These word clouds take all of the text from the candidate’s speeches and give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Please visit Wordle if you are interested in learning more or creating your own.
Barack Obama Convention Speech
John McCain Convention Speech
Joe Biden Convention Speech
Sarah Palin Convention Speech
What do these word clouds say to you? What do they say about the folks who gave these speeches? What do these word clouds say about our political process? What do these word clouds say about our political parties?
The fact that people respond to brute force and taglines over nuance, reason, and reflection MADDENS me. If we are to forward the conversation together we must be willing to engage in a dialogue that is informed by common commitments and a willingness to act in tandom. What we cannot do is stick to slogans, taglines, and talking points that have no meaning. Both Presidential campaigns are guilty of the latter, though there is a significant difference. This difference was highlighted at Rick Warren’s Faith Form last week.
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