Let the smearing begin

By Brian A. Burns

Hillary Clinton announced today that she will be slowing down enough to allow Barack Obama to take the checkered flag in the race for the Democratic presidential nominee. Although many believe it is high time for our nation to have a female president, and though most of us always believed the first would be Hillary, this may be the best move on her part for the betterment of our nation. At least at this point in time.

We have all come to learn what the game “presidential election” is all about. There are no rules it seems, and the populous generally votes for the candidate who “smears” the best. We have noticed over the past eight years that the Republicans have pitched most of their funds into the “smear” position, with the rest being poured into players who are experts in the “power hide” spot. They spit out their attacks, which mostly have nothing to do with a candidate’s qualifications, against issues like the clothes they once wore, the church they once attended, the food they prefer, or their hairstyle in the 70’s, while using legal loopholes to hide their candidate’s resume. If in fact they cannot hide it very well, and all types of faults are issued to the public through the press, they ramp up their personal attacks to the level of ‘ludicrous’, and hope their constituents will bite.

I’ve met many a Republican who have said the Democrats play dirty in election campaigns. These were not unintelligent people, but people who’ve fallen into the cell of misinformation. They’ve been told that every media outlet lies except for Fox News, and so they refuse to listen to anything else, and their views of the truth become awfully clouded. Because they’re headline junkies they’ve grown to believe in the slogan “fair and balanced” but have nothing to compare it to. They wouldn’t know how unfair and unbalanced the Fox televised tabloid truly is, because they’ve grown too lazy to research a potential president’s qualifications through any other network or source of information. Consequently, they’ve adapted well and they have no problem blocking out the trash-attacks coming from their candidate. It doesn’t matter to them because it must not be bad - “Republicans don’t play dirty.” They have grown a keen ear to what the Democrat is saying. Although what goes in one ear enters their mixer-minds, gets churned around, and comes out with a different meaning entirely. If they heard the Independent candidate say, “We have to fix the problems with this nation,” the Neo-Con spits back, “He hates America.”

With Barack Obama driving the Democratic car, the Republicans will have to dig far deeper to find trash to sling. And if priests and pastors would learn to mind their own business they would have even less to catapult. Perhaps the most ingenious move on Obama’s part was to publish the book about his life. In that simple move Obama threw his garbage onto the table for everyone to pick through. He basically said, “Here’s what I’ve done, go ahead and slam me if you want to. I’ve already acknowledged it, and have moved beyond it.” This gives him the opportunity to step away to watch Karl Rove and his band of thugs dive through the scant dump.

With Hillary Clinton’s dump already being mountain-sized, it would’ve been a nightmare of mud slinging. And since the Democrats have a problem with fighting fire with fire, there’s no doubt that she would pay closer attention to the mud-that-matters, as opposed to the mud-that-hurts. With either Democrat we would expect to see an election run where they point out John McCain’s support for failed ideas, and his willingness to continue sending our troops to die overseas in the Cheney/Bush oil war, and his inability to face domestic issues with any honesty or integrity. The Republican’s instead will lie and tell the population that Barack Obama is a Muslim - because that seems to work in frightening Christian and especially Jewish extremists. They’ll go back to the photo of Obama dressed in the traditional clothes of Kenya and lie about him wanting to dress in Muslim fashion. Of course, they’ll bring up his middle name and call him the enemy. Beyond the lies they’ll be relying on the racist redneck vote - those who are psychologically entrenched in the 1800’s.

For now, at least, we can sleep better knowing the Democratic candidate has packed lightly, and isn’t dragging along a mountain of trash that would be used against them. It’s a good thing for all of us that Hillary has run out of gas, especially for us who vote independently of party lines, because the last thing a swing-voter wants is the continuous ringing of the telephone with some person on the other end talking about how evil Hillary is for finding compassion enough to keep her marriage alive after her husband’s sexual misdemeanor.