Nathaniel

Shockey

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October 20, 2008

McCain’s Negative Ads: Someone Has to Say It, But It Hurts Our Feelings!

Senator Obama, this is truly a good day for America. Too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed. So I wanted to stop and say, congratulations. How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day. Tomorrow, we'll be back at it. But tonight Senator, job well done.

I'm John McCain and I approved this message.

“100 percent of John McCain’s ads have been attack ads.” – Barack Obama

This point is relatively petty, and quite frankly, it isn’t shocking that Obama would say something untrue. But to suggest that McCain’s advertising has been generally negative is probably fair.

There are a two points that need to be made about this.

1. The reason McCain spends so much time and money to point out Obama’s flaws is because the mainstream media, outside of Fox News, aren’t doing it for him. Compare this to their handling of McCain and Sarah Palin. Of course, conservative columnists and radio talk show hosts are screaming at the top of their lungs that Obama is covered in so many red flags that he actually looks like he’s representing Communist China. But then, their primary audience is made up of conservatives. So how can the McCain camp reach the whole spectrum of voters without negative ads?

2. Americans don’t value their thoughts nearly as much as their feelings. If you ever think of it – I mean, if you ever feel like it – the next time you are involved in any conversation of substance, count how many times you hear or say, “I feel” or “I think.” You’d think – excuse me, you’d feel like – thinking was illegal.

Take CNN’s ridiculous Audience Reaction Meter that was meant to track how members of the audience were reacting to every moment of the debate. Apparently, certain audience members had dials, which they turned one way or another, depending on how much they liked or disliked what was being said.

First, anyone who watched or read any of the “fact checks,” after the debates knows that an average of about 14 out of every 15 statements the candidates make are untrue. How much does it matter that something sounds good or bad when we’re not sure it makes sense, or is even accurate?

Second, if you watched the meters, you’ll notice they go way up or way down in as short as span as five seconds during the same candidate’s response. Of course emotions are fickle. Mine are, yours are, that’s the nature of emotions. But unfortunately, we’ve convinced our candidates that appealing to our intelligence is not nearly as important as appealing to our feelings.

Americans seem to have taken the “if you don’t have anything nice to say” idea a bit too far. Obama and McCain are running for president. If they have to step outside the “nice” box once in a while to call one another on something, perhaps we can forgive them for not ending with, “But I still think you’re a nice guy.”

No one likes negativity, but unfortunately, life is not all positive. It would be wonderful if we had two perfect candidates. They wouldn’t have anything nasty to say about one another, and we’d end up with a winner regardless of who won. But we don’t, and until we do, negativity and attack ads will just have to continue.

Obama and the media expect America to grant Obama get-out-of-jail-free cards for his close involvement with ACORN, his political career kick-off party with William Ayers, his relationship with anti-American pastor Jeremiah Wright – a man who baptized his children, was his self-proclaimed spiritual mentor, and whose words he used to title his book – and for drastically changing his positions on oil-drilling, Iraqi-war withdrawal and our relationship with Israel.

Perhaps we should at least look into these allegations before dismissing them on account of sounding negative.

How can we ask McCain to battle a candidate who is adored by the media without using attack ads? America is smarter than this, and although they may be a bit rusty, our brains are still functional. Perhaps a few weeks before a presidential election would be a fitting time to take them out of storage, dust them off a bit, and use them.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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