William Shakespeare use to begin performances by asking for an indulgence from his audience on a variety of issues. It is in his spirit that I to ask for an indulgence from you, the reader. I will not be using art to comment on our country this week but rather write a purely political piece about what I view to be a broken campaign promise.
The catalyst for this entry was an August 9th Politico article entitled “Obama Plan, Destroy Romney.” It detailed how the Obama reelection campaign plans to use, “A ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character,” to defeat Romney should he be the Republican nominee in 2012. I found the article’s content to be an outright rebuke to the vision Obama set forth in his presidential campaign. In 2008, Obama won be presenting a vision of this country which included political civility.
Even though I greatly disagreed with candidate Obama, I was hopeful that President Obama would be successful in changing the tone of our country’s politics. The challenges we face are too numerous, and the consequences too grim for us as a country to continue engaging in a political system that adheres to adolescent antics. For me, “change you can believe,” was a change in the tone politicians used to describe each other. Until this week, I still held out hope that Obama could change this. Hope, being the operative word, was lost when I read the Politico article.
What I found most disturbing about the article was the openness in which Obama’s advisors seemed to brag about their strategy. That, to the Obama campaign, this next election was about personality, rather than policy, is shocking. For a country facing massive economic turmoil, the notion that Obama wants the next election to be decided on a caricature his campaign would draw of Mitt Romney should be insulting to the electorate.
In life we are often faced with two choices: The Right Choice and the Easy Choice. Far too often American political candidates have taken the Easy Choice. They have scored electoral victories by using vicious personal attacks on their opposition. Elections should be about policy positions and not character assassination. There are some who would say I was too naïve and foolish to believe that one person could change our political culture. They were and still are wrong.
Those who have truly changed our country did so by making the Right Choice alone. It’s about Rosa Parks taking a seat on the bus by herself or Betty Ford speaking about breast cancer while the subject was still taboo. Leadership is about having the courage to do the right thing when no one else will. For Obama this means ending petty political attacks by his campaign and the DNC, and instead focusing on issues. I’ll concede that Republicans are equally guilty of this flaw; however both parties have the opportunity to change this. Americans are smart, and will favorably recognize those candidates who run “grown-up” campaigns.
I understand that every day the president is personally attacked by people because of his race and questions of birth, along with a plethora of other ridiculous issues. Those people are wrong and ignorant and the President is right to ignore them. He is wrong though to engage in and use their tactics against his own political opposition.
William Shakespeare once said, “It is a good divine that follows his own instructions.” President Obama, take note. In 2012, the issues are too serious for us as a country to focus on anything less. Furthermore, should Obama use character assassination to defeat Mitt Romney, he will essentially be the antithesis of the very many who ran for president in 2008. In conclusion, I believe Shakespeare would best classify this as a tragedy.
And with that, I thank you good reader for the indulgence.
To Read “Obama Plan: Defeat Romney” from Politico please click here: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60921.html