Collegian File Photo
In the midst of the presidential campaigns preceding next year’s election, the typical mudslinging, name calling and character bashing is heating up as it always does. The question remains, are we voting for candidates who offer the best solutions to our country’s problems, or are we voting for the candidate whose name is least destroyed?
Nastiness is nothing new to campaign strategy. In fact, nasty campaigning is growing more politically correct along with our nation. The exchanges between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in during the election of 1800 could be considered unmatched in terms of nastiness.
“John Adams is a blind, bald, crippled, toothless man who wants to start a war with France,” Jefferson said. “When he’s not busy importing mistresses from Europe, he’s trying to marry one of his sons to a daughter of King George. Haven’t we had enough monarchy in America?”
John Adams had some tasteful responses of his own.
“If Thomas Jefferson wins, murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced… Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames, female chastity violated, children writhing on a pike?”
I wonder what was holding these two back from saying what they really thought about one another.
Obviously things have grown a bit more civilized over the years, but politicians are still stuck with the same bad habit.
I don’t want to vote for a president because they’re not quite as bad as the other option, I would prefer to vote for someone because their policies and solutions are the best. This shouldn’t be a vote for the lesser of two evils.
I would like to try an experiment that counts the number of minutes politicians spend discussing actual issues compared to the minutes they spend discussing how horrible everyone else is.
One thing that I’m always flabbergasted by is the race for party candidacy. I wonder if party nominees realize that one of them is going to become a candidate yet they make every person within their own party look like a complete idiot scumbag. And they’re not supposed to be serving any self interest, as they all claim.
Something about this just doesn’t seem right, and I think on several occasions we have obviously missed the mark with our choice of president just because the winner ran a more effective smear campaign.
People complain about nasty campaigning every time the season revs up, and with the exception of insults becoming more civilized, it really hasn’t slowed down at all. Apparently the only thing we can do as voters is to take these accusations and insults with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, some of the accusations do carry value for voters. I’ve give up trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.