Posted by
Patrick Henry on Sunday, October 17, 2010 11:22:38 PM
Politics is a nasty business. It is about the ebb and flow of power, about achieving
maximum leverage and often, about vast sums of money. Like all things having to
do with power and money, politics can be the ultimate corrupter of the human soul.
Except that the clandestine erosion of moral scruples seldom remains secret, erupting
instead like a gangrenous wound and showering the rest of us with its bilious filth.
If you've been watching the political ads on TV lately, you know exactly what I'm
talking about.
What motivates public figures to cast aspersions on their rivals, buttressing them
with half-truths, innuendoes, gossip and plain lies? It is the game, in which winning
and losing is everything, and acquiring a winning hand (the end) justifies any means.
In politics the winner gets the title, the office and the spoils, and the loser simply
slinks back into relative anonymity to run again another day -- or not.
When sourcing the stench of such chicanery, look first at those who have sunk into
abject desperation. In another reality, it could be any political party or politician (and
has been). But in the 2010 mid-term election milieu it is the Democratic party, hope-
lessly down in the polls, watching the reins of legislative power slip through greedy
fingers like so many grains of sand on a windswept beach, and retching from the
depths of their hopelessness a seemingly unending stream of vileness directed toward
their opponents. Whether we understand it or not, it to some degree denigrates,
sullies and demeans us all.
Consider but a few examples. Facing massive public disapproval and performance
ratings plummeting faster than the Hindenburg, President Barack Obama and his
team have flailed for a stategy to turn the tide. Unable to run on their record, since
a clear majority disapprove of what they have done, they correctly perceived that
their only hope was painting their opponents an even uglier color. Appeal to public
animosity toward George W. Bush, a pointless attack on House Minority Leader
John Boehner with whom many in the non-political class are not even familiar,
and the attempt to persuade that Republicans stood only for obstruction and failed
policies of the past have not succeeded in convincing many prospective voters to
forgive and forget. Desperation turned to panic.
Most recently, Obama and his minions have launched an attack on the Chamber
of Commerce which is airing millions of political ads attacking business unfriendly
Democrats. The perverse logic of the Obama attack on the Chamber runs as follows:
the Chamber has foreign chapters and, therefore, collects foreign dues. It is against
the law to use foreign money to impact a domestic political campaign. We do not
know how much foreign money the Chamber gets, so unless the Chamber opens
its books to prove that they are not commingling funds to buy political advertisements,
they may be guilty of buying election for Republicans. All speculation, zero proof,
assumption of guilt and responsibility on the accused to prove innocence. A more
dishonest, contemptible, un-American, morally bankrupt charge has never been
leveled in a mid-term election. It is as syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer
says, "positively reptilian." Desperate people do and say desperate things.
In another sterling example, Kentucky Democratic senatorial candidate Jack
Conway this week released an attack ad against his opponent, Republican Rand
Paul, citing charges by an anonymous woman that while in college, Paul tied
her up and forced her to kneel before an idol called Aqua Buddha. Conway
further inferred that Paul was a member of some sinister secret society while
in college that was associated with this incident. To even the most unschooled,
many questions come to mind. Who is this mystery woman, and why has she
waited until this most crucial time of a hotly contested race to come forward?
Is their any corroborating evidence beyond her so-called testimony to confirm
that such an event ever occurred? Why won't she identify herself? Will she
take a polygraph? Again, gossip, no hard proof, innuendo, character assassination.
And in fairness, how many of us didn't do a stupid thing or two while in college?
But according to Conway, something a man is alleged to have done by someone
lacking the courage to identify herself or proof to corroborate her claims, not
meeting the criteria for an indictable crime and lying twenty-some years in the
past is supposed to be a good reason not to vote for him today. Hmmm. Desperate
people do and say desperate things, and Jack Conway must REALLY be quite
desperate.
Then we have the case of Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez in California, going
racial by publicly complaining that her Vietnamese constituents are going to take
away "her seat" and give it to Republican rival Van Tran. Imagine? Were the two
candidates' parties and/or sexes reversed, Tran would likely be hanging on a cross
somewhere outside Los Angeles, the nails hammered in by media gossip hounds.
I would guess Rep. Sanchez is quite attached to "her seat." Desperate people. If
space permitted we could include the illegal alien housekeeper smear job done on
Meg Whitman in the California gubernatorial race, the recent public assertion by
a Democratic political strategist that if Republicans were elected "a bunch of
nutcases would be running the place," and so forth and so on.
People who do and say these kinds of things not only fail to respect others, they
raise serious doubts about their own self-respect. How low would they go to win?
What if a man (or woman) gains the whole world and loses their own soul? Perhaps
not a question we can or should definitively answer. But we do have a legitimate
stake in what all of this dishonest, unethical, race-baiting, fear-mongering, gutter-
level rhetoric does to our collective soul as a nation. What does it say that after
watching fifteen minutes of election news or a serial barrage of political ads one
feels the urgent need of a long, hot shower?
Democrats and Republicans as well ignore this lesson at their own peril. Democrats
passed, along straight party lines, utilizing financial bribes, private arm-twisting and
clandestine midnight meetings, a healthcare reform bill which, according to non-
partisan polls, a majority of Americans detests, disagrees with and wants repealed.
Though Democrats are loth to believe it, the wrath of America is comprised of equal
parts disdain for elements of the bill and outrage in the way it was passed. So while
any given candidate may successfully slander their way through an election, the end
can be permanently damaged by the means. America's reaction to Obamacare proves
it. I don't live in Kentucky or California, or belong to the Chamber of Commerce. But
if I did, I would greatly prefer an (alleged) Aqua Buddha Rand Paul to a slithering,
ethically challenged sleazer like Conway, a Van Tran over someone who claimed
"ownership" of a seat that belongs to the people, or an organization that was
strengthening the very businesses this power-crazed president is killing for years
before he ever thought about running for office. Desperate people do desperate
things. If the politicians won't clean up their filthy mess, then the rest of us will
just have to be sure they pay the price. But how do Democrats EVER get back
from what they have become?