Shortly after the airing of Sen. Obama’s much talked about political message, which has widely been heralded as the most expensive campaign ad ever produced by a major party candidate, the campaign of Republican nominee John McCain released a short statement, saying: “As anyone who has bought anything from an infomercial knows, the sales job is always better than the product. Buyer beware.”
The McCain campaign website also moved to post on their 'splash page' a 30 second ad in response to Sen. Obama’s message saying “Tonight Senator Obama paid over $3 million for thirty minutes to tell us how he will try to fix America. We only need 30 seconds to tell you how unprepared Barack Obama is and how wrong his plan for America is.” -- A more cool-headed approach would have been to quickly agree to the basic tenets of Sen. Obama’s message while respectfully offering a different path.
Unfortunately for the McCain campaign, it has squandered its political capital in a blitzkrieg of negative ads, doubling down on the same old fear-mongering strategies taken straight from the Karl Rove political playbook of the past decade. All of which have flatly failed. These strategies all bear the same hallmark; after causing the stir of an initial whoosh in the media, they dully thud in the resounding ‘booing’ of the hardest of right-wing rally-goers. In stark contrast to the percussive droning of McCain's negative campaigning, Obama offers a different view of the challenges facing our nation and more importantly, an optimistic belief in the resilience of the Americans who will rise to those challenges. Refreshing, yes, refreshing indeed for those of us who have for too long been wandering in the wilderness and in dire thirst of a reviving draught from the wellspring of positive and optimistic politics:
Senator Obama, during the thirty minute spot coolly revealed his trump card, without arrogance or a false doctrine of superiority, but with humility and decency, laid bare his hopeful and optimistic vision for America’s future before the American people. At this juncture in American Politics, Sen. Obama offers the American people optimism and hope, as opposed to fear and pessimism. Obama’s is the voice that is finally calling America to rally once again around her greatest ideals. There can really be no other response from the McCain campaign other than to respectfully agree to disagree on how we are to yet again reach toward the highest ideal of our Nation. Yet, by the very wording of the McCain campaigns response of “buyer beware” and “try to fix America” they seem to indicate that they would continue the same doctrine of fear that the Bush White House has used over these past dreadful years as a bullwhip meant not to rally us toward our greatest potential, but to herd the American people into a cramped pen of abjectly timid obeisance.
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