The Questionably Positive Side of Negative Presidential Campaigning — Dana Milbank’s Common Sense Assessment of What Is Happening Seems Valid

16 August 2012

My detective partner once said to me (words to the more colorful effect of) — “The key to good policing is to have the capacity for being a bigger jerk than the bad guys”

When reason and decency fail, sometimes you have to start kicking behinds.

In apparent accord, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank thinks that the two-sided negativity of 2012 presidential campaign is Payback’s result.

The Democratic Party has learned not to let the Republican Party’s institutionalized Venomous Lie Machine (my words) overwhelm them:

Yes, it’s ugly out there.

But is this worse than four years ago, when Obama was accused by the GOP vice presidential nominee of “palling around with terrorists”? Or eight years ago, when Democratic nominee John Kerry was accused of falsifying his Vietnam War record?

What’s different this time is that the Democrats are employing the same harsh tactics that have been used against them for so long, with so much success. They have ceased their traditional response of assuming the fetal position when attacked, and Obama’s campaign is giving as good as it gets — and then some.

[Dan] Balz [also at the Washington Post] is correct when he observes that the “most striking” element of the campaign is “the sense that all restraints are gone, the guardrails have disappeared and there is no incentive for anyone to hold back.”

In large part, this is because the Democrats are no longer simply whining about the other side being reckless and unfair: They are being reckless and unfair themselves.

I agree.

In my estimation, the Republican Party started this walk through humankind’s solid sewage — and I say that as a former moderate Republican

Milbank’s examples are justly chosen.

Although I thought that Senator John Kerry was (and remains) sometimes obnoxiously pompous, I was repulsed by the Republican Party’s ethics-lacking “swiftboating” attack on this fine man’s Vietnam War record.

Not only did the Republican Party Lie Machine demonstrate a lack of appreciation for Vietnam War veterans by dishonestly attacking Senator Kerry, they intentionally denigrated a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts recipient.

Lower than that, I thought, it is impossible to go.

Until this same bunch of Republican rat-bags accused the president-to-be of befriending terrorists and being a foreigner.

Now Republicans are tear-dribbling — the same way the predatory bullies I used to put in jail did, as the bars closed behind them

When Vice President Biden told a mixed race crowd that the Romney campaign wanted to put them back in chains, I had to laugh.

Sometimes payback is fun to watch. And, given the exceedingly close relationship between today’s Republican Party and the nation’s humanity-squashing plutocracy, Biden’s statement arguably holds more truth than lie.

In the President’s position, I would not apologize for Biden’s allusion, either. The Republican’s Sewage Machine may finally have met its match.

If United States leadership no longer has the merit to be great, let’s at least see how far we into Repulsivity’s Slop we can stoop

Perhaps we can leave History’s stage on a tide of viciousness-ness that will impress future analysts of the human experience.

The moral? — The path to perdition is paved with bad intentions

Both American political parties have repeatedly demonstrated bad intentions, disguised by deliberately crafted untruths.

Now (metaphorically as a result of Newton’s law of equal and opposite reactions), the two political parties join each other in slapping us with turds that suck light from the sun.

Expecting something good to come from leadership’s interminable swim in the toilet is American voters’ biggest folly.

PeteFree.com

The Questionably Positive Side of Negative Presidential Campaigning — Dana Milbank’s Common Sense Assessment of What Is Happening Seems Valid