Above the Belt

“Today’s fighting words will be reduced to tomorrow’s interesting anecdotes but the true questions at the heart of every presidential election will remain.”  Yet the mud-slinging, finger-pointing, and blame naming always seems to be harsh, out of line, and of course extremely negative. A truly dirty and mean political ad usually has an adverse effect on me and the politician sponsoring it turns out to be the bad guy.  For example, “the Obama camp in a super-PAC financed ad blamed Mitt Romney for the death of a woman who lost her health insurance when Bain Capital closed a Kansas City Steel Plant.” Mitt Romney’s party is not completely innocent when it comes to “smear campaigns”, either.  Just recently, Romney advisor Richard Williamson suggested that the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi might have been avoided if his man had been on watch.”  I have expressed that I do not have an affiliation to a particular party so both accusations seem like extremely low blows to me.  Although, this is not a new campaign tactic nor is it “unique” to the 2012 Presidential election.  Campaigning politicians have been slinging mud at each other since 1776 and in comparison to some elections in the past, “this contest has all the inter-religious animosity of a Lutheran versus Methodist slow pitch softball game.”  The negative advertisements, candidate bashing, and outright viciousness displayed during the course of an election makes the decision who to vote for even more complicated for me.  I understand that these candidates are doing everything they can to sway voters but can they not keep it clean?  Professor Melissa Deckman, a professor of political science at Washington College predicts that with the election still weeks away, “from an advertising perspective, this election could well be the most negative in history.” I do not support this type of political campaigning and find it very disappointing that this practice still occurs before elections.  Even more disappointing is that “brutal campaigns endure not only because they let off the collective steam of 300 million opinionated Americans, but because – unlikely as it seems – they work.”

Is this the nastiest election ever?