Negative Campaigning and the Morning After
Barack Obama ran for president on, among other things, a promise to move the country beyond the partisan rancor of the Bush and Clinton years. Already observers are watching his every move to see if he will deliver on this promise. Obama has a difficult needle to thread because he not only has promised a less hyper-partisan approach than we have seen in recent years, but has also run on a progressive platform with regards to a range of issues including foreign policy, economic policy and the environment. Obama's challenge is to deliver on progressive policies while not creating a nasty political environment. In some respects this is the mirror image of the Clinton years where we had a nasty, partisan political environment, to which both parties contributed, but no genuinely progressive leadership from the White House.
Conservative commentators have been tempering their new found enthusiasm for an African American president with warnings of the need for Obama to be bipartisan and inclusive. The silence of these same people on this issue when George W. Bush was first elected in 2000 notwithstanding, there is something to these claims. The tasks that lie ahead for Obama are sufficiently daunting that he will benefit greatly by support and goodwill from both sides of the aisle. My sense is that Obama has the political savvy, judgment and political skills to achieve this goal, but it will not be easy.
If we are serious about moving the US into a post-partisan, or at least a less partisan, phase, it is neither fair, reasonable nor wise to place all the burden of doing this on the president-elect. We will not cast partisan rancor aside simply because a Democratic president appoints a few Republicans to high offices or even because that president brings a different tone to Washington.
One important component to reducing the aggressively partisan climate of American politics is to hold politicians, and others, accountable for their often hyperbolically divisive rhetoric and attempts to question the integrity and patriotism of their opponents. Politicians would be a lot less likely to use defamatory, vicious and untrue attacks if they knew they would be held accountable for what they said during the heat of campaigns. For example, John McCain's concession speech was certainly gracious, but perhaps we should pause a second from congratulating the senator from Arizona for the class he exhibited in conceding defeat to ask him about what he said during the campaign.
Imagine asking John McCain the following question "Senator McCain, during the campaign you repeatedly implied and said that President-elect Obama is a socialist. Given that beginning next year the president of the US will be a socialist, do you intend to support a guerrilla movement to restore capitalism in the US, accept that the US is now a socialist country or did you just lie about that to get elected?" The victors, of course, need to be held accountable as well, so a question for President-elect Obama might be "Do you really think that a surge like strategy in Afghanistan will help the US fight global Jihad, or did you just say that to make yourself look tougher to the electorate?"
On one hand, this is taking "gotcha" journalism to an absurd level, but it is also an effort to rein in the claims, accusations and semi-truths which have come to dominate our campaigns. Candidates know that due to the healthy and almost natural urge for both winners and losers to be gracious and put the election behind them, the worst excesses of campaigns will be quickly forgotten, or at the very least, politicians know they will not be confronted about these things once the campaign is over. Thus, a decent and unifying impulse in the political class becomes a factor which enables the negative and divisive tones of our political campaigns.
While it certainly is important to put hard fought political campaigns behind us and move on to the even harder work of governance, putting the campaign behind us too quickly means that there are no consequences or disincentives for the often deeply troubling excesses of the campaign. It also suggests that months of angry rhetoric seeking to tap into the ugliest sentiments of the American electorate which we saw on display at Republican rallies in October, should be forgotten simply because of a nice concession speech. While very few people would actually enjoy watching John McCain squirm when being asked about why he didn't pause to reflect when a man he held in as high esteem as John Lewis criticized the racially divisive nature of the Republican campaign, it might give pause to other politicians before dragging their campaigns, and the national political dialog into the gutter.
Again, my goal is not to run salt into what are undoubtedly some painful wounds for John McCain and the Republican Party, nor to approach this in a partisan way, but to recognize that the almost anything goes nature of our political campaigns have a significant influence on our political culture more broadly and to create some ways of holding all politicians responsible for what they do in the heat of a campaign.
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Until, and unless, the Republican Party takes responsibility for the current chaos and the failure of the neocon agenda (and they are primarily responsible), it will be almost impossible for them to move on and join the rest of the country.
In South Africa, after apartheid, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to bring healing to the country. Just imagine the progress that could be made if George Bush - or Dick Cheney - and Donald Rumsfeld - Mitch McConnell - John Boehner - Newt Gingrich - etc. etc. etc - stood up and acknowledged that their path of corporations over people - preemptive war - spying - etc. etc. etc - was partisan, ideological, selfish, even dangerous. And what if they acknowledged that their path had hurt the world and the American people? And what if they truly pledged to work with President Obama and rejected obstructionism as a policy?
I know, dream on...but big dreams came true last week. What if...
See Rusel deMaria's Profile
One antidote to the negativity of our political scene is to change the electorate itself. To that end, I propose that Obama transform his ground game into a national grassroots communication effort aimed at humanizing people on different sides, sharing our truths, creating civil disagreement and putting an end to the massive effort of some operatives to label us and divide us. An electorate composed primarily of people who can talk effectively with each other is less likely to succumb to the fear and smear politics.
I started a group on Facebook called the New National Dialog Project. If this sounds good to anyone reading this post, please come check it out.
Post-partisanism and non-partisanism are meaningless political bromides. We will *always* have partisanship, unless 100% of the citizenry agree on everything, which of course will never happen. I don't want President-elect Obama to be nonpartisan or post-partisan. You know good and well his opponents won't be nonpartisan, but being the dedicated hypocrites that they are, they'll demand that he be nonpartisan and blame him for not doing so. Indeed, they will do all in their power to create a "nasty political environment" then blame Obama for being "partisan" in defending his policies.
A better course would be to simply call out the right-wing hypocrites when they open their mouths. This obviously won't be hard to do and could provide some much-needed entertainment.
I do believe in 'rubbing salt into' this 'wound'! The McCain/Palin campaign wounded The United States of America by consistently and knowingly tapping into the mob mentality of their supporters. They incited people into violent displays. They inspired hatred and division. They accepted screams of "kill him" and "terrorist'" from their crowds without trying to calm the situation.
They left their supporters, after the election, with all this instilled hatred. We now have a black family that is in so much more danger than they should have been in, and all due to the horrific campaign waged by the McCain/Palin team.
Should we allow the lies told and the hatred incited to just be shrugged off as 'politics as usual'???
Go check out some of the 'other side' sites and hear what is being called for. If anything happens to our new President-elect and his family....
Yes, they should certainly be held accountable and an apology issued and a renunciation of all of the lies told.
AMEN! I am not ready to make nice...not at all. We must continue to be vigilant.
To get rid of negative campaigning, we have to get rid of the opinionated talking heads and replace them with people who have in-depth knowledge of issues, rather than experts in how to spin issues.
This is the most intelligent group of responses to a post that I have read in the past few weeks. Can we return sanity to the rest of the citizenry?
Ahhhh!! YES!
"...the almost anything goes nature of our political campaigns (has) a significant influence on our political culture more broadly and to create some ways of holding all politicians responsible for what they do in the heat of a campaign."
BRAVO my fellow American.
Responsible media and politicians would be a boon to our collective integrity.
Lieberman must go! Otherwise it is just politics as usual on the hill. If Sen. Reid keeps him and PresElect Obama covers for him, our Democratic Party can lose our momentum for change. Who would believe in our integrity if we keep Lieberman - not me! It's not politics. It's demanding accountability. We do or we don't.
Words do matter, even those said during the heat of a campaign. But there are certain boundaries that should never be crossed:
1. Spreading slanderous, hateful, outright lies. ( Saxby Chambliss, Elizabeth Dole.)
2. Inflaming the basest animal instincts in people (also via vicious lies and gross distortion
Let's face it, as a black man / President, Obama islikely to be victim of assassination attempts or other physical harm even more than most presidents. Inciting crowds as McCain/Palin did was utterly inexcusable and intolerable.
BTW: Calling McCain "erratic" does not fall into either of the above categories, because
1. McCain WAS behaving erratically (to put it politely) and despite the GOP's and MSM's absurd claims - erratic does not conjure up age. Most of us when we think of "erratic" behavior, we think of teenage kids or co-workers suddenly acting "weird" and wonder about possible drug or alcohol use. And no one even remotely suggested anything like that about McCain.
Those who jumped to the erratic = old guy conclusion were projecting their own fears and doubts about McCain.
As for Obama's stated position favoring a "surge" in Afghanistan - we'll soon find out whether that was election season posturing. Although I must admit I'm not sure which will be worse: if it turns out it was an election strategy OR a military strategy he intends to follow through on...
I don't recall Obama saying a "surge" would work in Afghanistan. I do remember him saying that the situation in Afghanistan is different from the situation in Iraq, and that he would consult with military leaders to determine the strategy that would work best. And I recall him saying that more troops are required in Afghanistan to get the job done, which is a perception that military leaders seem to share
I believe the term "surge" in relationship to his strategy for Afghanistan is an invention of the media. Furthermore, I believe the media encourages divisive politics and behaviors. Much of what they "report" is in responsive to bait that politicans throw them, knowing they value a good story more than meaningful or constructive reporting. Many of the stories they report could just as easily be ignored in favor of reporting on issues that actually could affect the American people.
The word surge was used, I believe, by McCain....
Please correct if I am wrong.
I am pleased with the way that our country voted..esp
It turns out American citizens need to reach out and take our minds and our dignity back at least as much as either party does.
I'm a liberal democrat..
And I'm not a muslim but I really wish Mr. Obama had stood right up and said.."I'm not a Muslim..bu
And the farcical idea of any Senator calling another Senator an Arab Terrorist.
Don't even get me started on the great GAS TAX PANDER..yo
And Obama ran..again
And the mere idea that an adult, who has been to college didn't know that Africa was a continent is to stupid even for Sarah Palin to be guilty of it.
We have to start demanding plain old common sense from our politicians. But we must begin by demanding common sense from ourselves, especially when we're listening to them.
Look guys, as someone who covered parts of the campaign, I can tell you it was hard getting "new" info from the McCain camp. And Sen. McCain would often give the exact-same speeches to certain groups (ie: NAACP and Urban League), whereas Obam would change up and add something to each talk.
Pundits were in the proverbial "tank" for their candidate of choice -- KO for Obama and O'Reiily for McCain.
But the real (please don't call them "elite") journalists, the ones many of you never get to know, are the ones working in the trenches, digging out the stories that we all discuss. They don't get the major play, the major pay, and the work they do is far from glamorous.
These days, because there are so many more sources of information than have ever existed, simply counting what one sees in a newspaper is an ineffective means of gauging coverage.
All over the map on this post. Hope I'm making sense.
I hear ya, Brodie. But the blog poses the question of whether John McCain conducted his campaign with honor and dignity. He did not. In fact, he signed off on all the ridiculous garbage spewed by Palin, Fred Thompson, Giulliani, Liebermann, et al. at the RNC convention. It was McCain's orgy, as civil as his own speech may have been or his abrupt awakening to the major issues in the last two weeks before the election. Everyone saw it and heard it. No one needed journalists, in the trenches or otherwise, to evaluate the sleaze factor in action.
Thanks for reeling me back in.
First, many of Obama's policies are socialist in nature, then again so were many of McCain's. Socialism (or policies that reflect socialistic thought) are not evil by nature, in fact such ideas as "universal healthcare", social security, and medicare are all socialistic -- everyone contributes to pool resources and then the pool is redivided back out according to need (technically SS isn't entirely need based because of the payout brackets, but it still has many socialistic features). So I'm not too sure if McCain's "attack" against Obama can even be labeled as false.
With respect to holding politicians accountant
Barack Obama needs to temper his approach to governing in the spirit of cooperation to get anything done in Washington, but there is no way in hell that I'm ready to let John McCain off the hook for the ugly campaign he conducted. The people can and should be as tough on him as possible, starting with his own party, which suffered the final blows to a dignity that will take years to overcome. If I was a Republican politician or a citizen of Arizona, he'd face a censure so quick it would make his head spin.
McCain (and Palin) should certainly be held responsible for their ugly "socialist, terrorist" rhetoric in particular, because at least among a lot of people, the fears and hatred that they have stirred up have not magically gone away, you can be sure. How about, "Uh, Senator McCain - you and your running mate have repeatedly implied that Barack Obama is dangerous and disloyal to the US. How can you then ask us all to 'unite' behind him?" Then, as in your question, "Do you intend to support (or better, take to the hills and lead) a guerilla movement to oust him and take back our country?"
The guy's forever yakking about his military stripes, but what about "Conduct unbecoming
We kinda did hold them accountable by not voting for them. Let history deal with them now.
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