Why everyone should hope that Obama wins the election

Now, in the last few decades, our political system has gone down the toilet in it's use of personal attack ads.  Look at the way that political opponents have torn each other apart, not on the issues or policy stances, but by impugning their character.  It's sad that we all know what the phrase "character assassination" (CA) means.  Up until this campaign season, the general way it goes is that both candidates say they'll keep it clean, then one crosses the line into CA so the other responds in kind.

 

This year has proven different.  McCain has fallen behind in the polls... so he has thrown every CA attempt he can think of.  Throwing distraction issue after distraction issue at the direction of Obama.  He's tried guilt by association attacks (listen to the Common Sense podcast on that topic for more details as to why that is a logically bad argument). Tried to paint Obama as an elitist (see prvios entries of mine why being elite is a GOOD thing for our leader), or a terrorist supporter, a supporter of vote fraud (of which ACORN is NOT guilty... its at worst registration fraud, and that's even debatable).  These attacks are meaningless to the job at hand, and represent the status quo of politics. Mudslinging and name calling.

 

McCain has many many issues in his closet that could be used against him.  Yet Obama has stayed away from them.  When he said families were off limits... he walked the talk.  When he said he'd stick to substantive issues, he mainly has.  If you look critically at the attacks Obama has leveled at McCain (and they are attacks), they question his plans and his record.  I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of a personal attack that Barack has leveled, perhaps the "out of touch" lines. That may have been to far. But I can't think of many non-policy attacks.  I can see why McCain, who has made many gaffes, would lose to the cutthroat campaign styling of Bush/Rove.

 

Now, McCain and Obama have both made the facts their bitch from time to time.  Obama's claims about McCain's Social Security plans are stretched... and McCain's claim that Obama is going to raise your taxes is also false, unless McCain is speaking to a crowd of families that make more than 92K a year, which is statistically very unlikely.  (note: Obama WILL raise MY taxes... I make more than the border for a single person... I'm OK with that.  I voted for the guy last Friday).  This bending of fact bothers me... but at least these topics are germain to the issue. Also, these claims can be verified and refuted if wrong.  (thank you for the existence of factcheck.org)

 

Now I get to my point as to why we need Obama to win. There's a classic sports adage, that successful teams and strategies are copied.  If Obama wins (and it looks favorable for him at the moment), then with a little luck we'll see future campaigns stick to the issues and not try to assassinate the character of their opponent.  To show you how well it can work... I respect John McCain, I think he's a good man.  I seriously disagree with his policies (for the most part), and I agree with Obama's (also, for the most part). I do laugh when McCain makes these misstatements on the campaign trail (the recent "I couldn't agree more" gaffe was funny... but everyone knew what he meant... so I laughed, and we moved on, Just like I laughed at Obama getting the number of years he was married wrong.)  Now when I hear McCain supporters calling Obama a Socialist, Terrorist Muslim with a radical preacher... that's reaping exactly what McCain's campaign has sown.  If it wins, I fear for the country that would continue to copy that winning model. 

 

Anyhow.  Peace... now go VOTE!!