The Republican campaigners have chosen to focus a lot of attention on reform. By definition, reform refers to dismantling a long-standing political system or process. So who are they reforming? George Bush has been President for the past eight years. Republicans have been in the Oval Office for twenty of the past twenty-eight years. Republicans held both the House and Senate for twelve years prior to the Democratic party gaining a slight majority in 2006. The long-standing power structures are Republican. John McCain himself has been in the Senate for the past twenty years and was implicated in the Keating 5 scandal in the 1980s.
Sarah Palin herself is already under investigation for abuse of power of the Governor's office, has ties to Senator Stevens, the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere", and the Alaskan Independence Party. These issues may be resolved in her favor, but it's hardly the environment in which to run a reform ticket.
Political campaigns thrive on powerful, emotional words. You will hear both parties using them to motivate voters to get out to the polls, preferably without stopping to think. In both cases, though, it is our responsibility to stop. Think. This choice of themes seems misguided. If enough people stop to think and ask "Who are we reforming?" it could be bad for the McCain-Palin ticket.
Sarah Palin herself is already under investigation for abuse of power of the Governor's office, has ties to Senator Stevens, the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere", and the Alaskan Independence Party. These issues may be resolved in her favor, but it's hardly the environment in which to run a reform ticket.
Political campaigns thrive on powerful, emotional words. You will hear both parties using them to motivate voters to get out to the polls, preferably without stopping to think. In both cases, though, it is our responsibility to stop. Think. This choice of themes seems misguided. If enough people stop to think and ask "Who are we reforming?" it could be bad for the McCain-Palin ticket.
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2 comments:
Keith, you hit a key tenet here: People need to learn to think for themselves rather than blindly believing everything they see in political ads - especially in this season when so much of the ad contents (of one candidate) are untrue. The internet makes it so easy to verify or refute what is being said, but voters have become either too entrenched in the habit of voting party lines or too apathetic to bother to delineate fact from fiction.
I suspect many people are voting on the polarizing issues that define their parties, rather than taking the time to know exactly what the candidates can do for country in terms of fixing our economy, changing how we depend on foreign oil or minimizing unemployment. If people were thinking and reading about these things and where the candidates stand, how could the polls look like they do? I'm dumbstruck.
Thanks for your thoughts, pamnv. I agree. People do seem to vote on image, narrative (as created by the campaign managers), litmus test issues, and party lines. Individual qualifications seem to come last. I suspect it is, as you say, due to apathy, lack of research time, and lack of internet skills to check out the mass of mis- and dis- information out there.
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