The Work and Life of Peter Prato, Freelance Photographer and Writer
The same is true for political parties, and politicians. My guess is that the majority of the American voters couldn’t even articulate the various branches of their own government, let alone describe to you the functions of the presidency. I can’t. And I’ve worked in politics.
So how then could we ever expect as a nation to know how to choose the right person for the job? A secure path to the endurance of this country in the evolving global and geo-political community is to ensure an education for all that would allow the educated the freedom to willingly participate in the existing form of an understood government or equally so, the tools to dismantle it in the name of something better. To vote for an office openly described as “the highest in the land” without a sound understanding of the roles and requirements of that office seems irresponsible at best and incredibly dangerous by almost any other estimation. Not providing a sufficient education to a voter is like giving a person who’s never gone sky-diving a parachute with no rip-cord. Strategically placing colors, sounds, data-points, bar-charts, graphs, video clips involving dead soldiers, push-polls, etc., is like pushing that person out of the plane. Smear campaigns, the Machiavellian tactics, and the deluge of media that obfuscate even the simplest of issues that affect us as Americans, are making it impossible for us to find common ground. For some, this is the point. For others, it doesn’t matter. Getting elected, which means getting enough votes, is all that matters (if you aren’t elected, you cannot govern- this is to say nothing about power, and what this means in this country). This is true of all government where elections are held. However, if the collateral damage of negative campaigning weighs less than the number of votes created, the logic follows that American politics, and more particularly, getting elected, depends upon a kind of practice that precludes loyalty. This is to be seen as a kind of infection, and when parties and their politicians are elected upon such practices, our government is infected, too. As a consequence of logic, so too are our people, so long as we have a government that claims to be of the people (meaning, “of the (number of) people (needed to vote in order for a particular candidate to win”). This cannot go on forever. Sooner or later, the fractures will become too painful to bear our weight. Sooner or later, if this is allowed to go on, we will not be able to stand. A government that represents a broken people, is by virtue of its representation, a broken government.
For the full article, written by Richard H. Davis, who ran John McCain’s campaign for president in 2000, visit-
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/03/21/the_anatomy_of_a_smear_campaign/
“It’s not necessary, however, for a smear to be true to be effective. The most effective smears are based on a kernel of truth and applied in a way that exploits a candidate’s political weakness. Having run Senator John McCain’s campaign for president, I can recount a textbook example of a smear made against McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 presidential primary. We had just swept into the state from New Hampshire, where we had racked up a shocking, 19-point win over the heavily favored George W. Bush. What followed was a primary campaign that would make history for its negativity.
In South Carolina, Bush Republicans were facing an opponent who was popular for his straight talk and Vietnam war record. They knew that if McCain won in South Carolina, he would likely win the nomination. With few substantive differences between Bush and McCain, the campaign was bound to turn personal. The situation was ripe for a smear.
It didn’t take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.
Anonymous opponents used “push polling” to suggest that McCain’s Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the “pollster” determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.
Thus, the “pollsters” asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that’s not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.
Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to “fellow South Carolinians” stating that McCain had “chosen to sire children without marriage.” It didn’t take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: “Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock.” Hand replied, “Wait a minute, that’s a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren’t any?”
Campaigns have various ways of dealing with smears. They can refute the lies, or they can ignore them and run the risk of the smear spreading. But “if you’re responding, you’re losing.” Rebutting tawdry attacks focuses public attention on them, and prevents the campaign from talking issues.
We chose to address the attacks by trying to get the media to focus on the dishonesty of the allegations and to find out who was making them. We also pledged to raise the level of debate by refusing to run any further negative ads — a promise we kept, though it probably cost us the race. We never did find out who perpetrated these smears, but they worked: We lost South Carolina by a wide margin.
The only way to stop the expected mud-slinging in 2004 is for both President Bush and Senator Kerry to publicly order their supporters not to go there. But if they do, their behavior would be the exception, not the rule.”