How does one start to discuss the absurdity and hypocrisy of the 2012 Presidential campaign? Does one begin by detailing the outright distortions – actually lies – that are being bandied about? Does one seek the high road in assailing the transgressions of the candidates? Or does one simply jump into the fray, taking off the gloves and dropping all pretense of neutrality? Deciding which to do in this campaign season is difficult because one cannot be honest without stating the unadulterated truth, without seeming to take sides in a partisan manner.
Campaigns are always filled with innuendo, half-truths, political spin, and hollow promises. What one candidate sees as a strong plan to move America forward, the opposition sees as a plan to move the nation backward. Such arguments are legitimate because one person's great idea is another person's folly. It is part of our political process that we debate such things, that each candidate presents his wares in the marketplace of ideas, and the shoppers choose what they see as the best, the most worthwhile product.
That has not occurred so far in this election cycle. This presidential election has taken lying to a new low, has created an environment where there is a strong aversion to facts, has resulted in the greatest secrecy in the history of modern elections. And so much of it lies with the Republican Party and its presumptive nominee Mitt Romney.
Never before has a campaign shown such a disdain for truth. Never before has a campaign so openly lied to the public. Never before has a campaign so brazenly admitted that it is lying. Never before has a campaign hid from voters details of what its candidate believes for fear that knowledge of those ideas will result in his not being elected.
But Romney has done each. He has resorted to the age-old GOP ploy of turning a campaign that should be about ideas into one couched in racism and resentment. Worse than his actually doing those things is the inability of too many people to see the danger in his lies, to see the deceitfulness in his secrecy, to see the recklessness in his disregard.
A look at the ads offered by the Romney campaign is a good starting point in discussing the deceit and the manner in which it has gone without enough challenge. Early in the campaign Team Romney took a quote from then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama about how the economy would play in the 2008 campaign and presented it as if President Barack Obama had recently uttered those words. The edited quote was a response to Sen. John McCain and the Republicans. When challenged about the obvious inaccuracies in the ad, a Romney campaign advisor said:
“First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business…. Ads are agitprop…. Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It’s ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context…. All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.”
Indeed, ads are about persuading people, convincing them that they must buy what they may not need nor want. Yet, there needs to be some truth in them, a sense that there is a foundation on which to build. Not for Team Romney. Outright lying is all within the framework of its idea of fair play.
The misuse of President Obama's quote was not an isolated incident. Recently, Team Romney took a portion of a presidential speech, edited it out of context, and argued that Obama is against small businesses. That the quote reflects an idea – no one is successful without help from somewhere or someone else – also expressed by Romney during the XIX Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002 was unimportant to Team Romney.
The same can be said of the effort to paint Obama as the "food stamp" or welfare president – code for Obama wants to take the hard-earned money of white America and give it to all those lazy black and Latino people sitting at home on welfare. Instead of honestly debating whether it is right to give states more flexibility in moving people from welfare to work, Team Romney seeks to paint a picture of Obama as simply wanting to send government checks to people unwilling to work. If one listened only to the Romney campaign one would not realize that Romney sought such a waiver while he was governor of Massachusetts or that two Republican governors sought those waivers from the Obama Administration.
The lies and deceit do not stop there.
In a speech in Colorado Thursday, President Obama said:
“I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back and GM is number one again. So now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs not just in the auto industry, but in every industry. I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China. I want them taking root in places like Pueblo.”
Republican sycophants quickly proclaimed that Obama said he wants to create an auto-bailout like policy for other industries.
As if that is not enough, the Democrats and Republicans agreed to cut defense and domestic spending by $1 trillion over 10 years as part of the debt ceiling deal. Team Romney and the Republicans now call those President Obama’s defense cuts.
Romney also refuses to detail how he will cut taxes by 20 percent in a supposedly revenue neutral plan. He says only that he will make changes to the tax code by eliminating deductions. Will those deductions be on capital gains? Mortgage interest deductions on second homes? Multi-million dollar tax right offs for owners of NASCAR tracks? Or will those deductions be the ones that middle- and working-class Americans depend on: the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, the Tuition Tax Credit?
We do not know because Mitt Romney won't say. We could probably bet that most of those deductions he plans to eliminate will not include the areas from which he benefits. Of course we can’t tell for sure since he refuses to release more than two years of his federal tax returns.
Campaigns are always filled with innuendo, half-truths, political spin, and hollow promises. What one candidate sees as a strong plan to move America forward, the opposition sees as a plan to move the nation backward. Such arguments are legitimate because one person's great idea is another person's folly. It is part of our political process that we debate such things, that each candidate presents his wares in the marketplace of ideas, and the shoppers choose what they see as the best, the most worthwhile product.
That has not occurred so far in this election cycle. This presidential election has taken lying to a new low, has created an environment where there is a strong aversion to facts, has resulted in the greatest secrecy in the history of modern elections. And so much of it lies with the Republican Party and its presumptive nominee Mitt Romney.
Never before has a campaign shown such a disdain for truth. Never before has a campaign so openly lied to the public. Never before has a campaign so brazenly admitted that it is lying. Never before has a campaign hid from voters details of what its candidate believes for fear that knowledge of those ideas will result in his not being elected.
But Romney has done each. He has resorted to the age-old GOP ploy of turning a campaign that should be about ideas into one couched in racism and resentment. Worse than his actually doing those things is the inability of too many people to see the danger in his lies, to see the deceitfulness in his secrecy, to see the recklessness in his disregard.
A look at the ads offered by the Romney campaign is a good starting point in discussing the deceit and the manner in which it has gone without enough challenge. Early in the campaign Team Romney took a quote from then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama about how the economy would play in the 2008 campaign and presented it as if President Barack Obama had recently uttered those words. The edited quote was a response to Sen. John McCain and the Republicans. When challenged about the obvious inaccuracies in the ad, a Romney campaign advisor said:
“First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business…. Ads are agitprop…. Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It’s ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context…. All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.”
Indeed, ads are about persuading people, convincing them that they must buy what they may not need nor want. Yet, there needs to be some truth in them, a sense that there is a foundation on which to build. Not for Team Romney. Outright lying is all within the framework of its idea of fair play.
The misuse of President Obama's quote was not an isolated incident. Recently, Team Romney took a portion of a presidential speech, edited it out of context, and argued that Obama is against small businesses. That the quote reflects an idea – no one is successful without help from somewhere or someone else – also expressed by Romney during the XIX Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002 was unimportant to Team Romney.
The same can be said of the effort to paint Obama as the "food stamp" or welfare president – code for Obama wants to take the hard-earned money of white America and give it to all those lazy black and Latino people sitting at home on welfare. Instead of honestly debating whether it is right to give states more flexibility in moving people from welfare to work, Team Romney seeks to paint a picture of Obama as simply wanting to send government checks to people unwilling to work. If one listened only to the Romney campaign one would not realize that Romney sought such a waiver while he was governor of Massachusetts or that two Republican governors sought those waivers from the Obama Administration.
The lies and deceit do not stop there.
In a speech in Colorado Thursday, President Obama said:
“I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back and GM is number one again. So now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs not just in the auto industry, but in every industry. I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China. I want them taking root in places like Pueblo.”
Republican sycophants quickly proclaimed that Obama said he wants to create an auto-bailout like policy for other industries.
As if that is not enough, the Democrats and Republicans agreed to cut defense and domestic spending by $1 trillion over 10 years as part of the debt ceiling deal. Team Romney and the Republicans now call those President Obama’s defense cuts.
Romney also refuses to detail how he will cut taxes by 20 percent in a supposedly revenue neutral plan. He says only that he will make changes to the tax code by eliminating deductions. Will those deductions be on capital gains? Mortgage interest deductions on second homes? Multi-million dollar tax right offs for owners of NASCAR tracks? Or will those deductions be the ones that middle- and working-class Americans depend on: the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, the Tuition Tax Credit?
We do not know because Mitt Romney won't say. We could probably bet that most of those deductions he plans to eliminate will not include the areas from which he benefits. Of course we can’t tell for sure since he refuses to release more than two years of his federal tax returns.
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