Final Thoughts On The 2008 Presidential Election

By D.T. Holt

This has to stop. Not the election or the campaigning, which will obviously stop after the results have been counted tomorrow night. What has to stop is the way we’ve been doing this for as many presidential election cycles as I can remember. The idea that a candidate can say whatever is necessary to win. That gross mischaracterizations and even outright lies are just part of a “tough campaign.” We have to expect more from our politicians and from ourselves.

It should be obvious to anyone who has been reading this blog that I am pulling for Barack Obama to win this election. While I am encouraged by the polls going into the final day of the campaign, I by no means think that this is a forgone conclusion. These things have a way of being much closer than anyone can predict and it could still go either way. But let’s, for the sake of argument, say that Obama will be elected President of the United States tomorrow night. At some point in the evening, John McCain will address a roomful of faithful supporters with a speech that will start out with something like “I’ve just spoken with Senator Obama and congratulated him on his victory and a well run campaign,” and go on with something along the lines of “I have nothing but respect for Senator Obama and plan to give the next President of the United States my full support,” and maybe something like “in these difficult times, it is more important than ever that Republicans and Democrats alike pull together to reach across the aisle and do the hard work of putting our country back on the right track.”

How can this possibly be what he will say after spending the last three months trying desperately to convince the American people that Barack Obama is a terrorist or a socialist or a redistributionist? If even half of the things that have been suggested about Barack Obama were true, why shouldn’t all of McCain’s supporters take to the streets and refuse to acknowledge a Barack Obama presidency?

The answer that most would give is that campaigns are tough and sometimes things are said during the course of a campaign that wouldn’t normally be said. How can we, as Americans who are asked to believe in this process, accept this answer? How can we all walk away from the divisiveness and the attempts to incite hatred and fear and mistrust? Elections and the future of our country are too important for us to continue to accept the angry rhetoric, the willing manipulation of half truths and the exploitation of an uninformed electorate.

It has to stop. No matter who wins this election, as a country, we have to decide, right here and now, that we will no longer accept this kind of behavior from our candidates. There is a vast difference between advertising and rhetoric which is critical of an opponent’s stances on the issues and that which seeks to defame his character by bending the truth and manipulating any factoid, no matter how inconsequential, in order to cast a shadow of fear or distrust.

If Barack Obama is elected president, it will be the first time in a long time that the politics of character assassination have failed. Should McCain win the office, we should all take to the streets, not to refuse acknowledgement of his presidency, but to make it known that never again will we allow ourselves to be used in this way. That in the future, we will expect our candidates to rise to a higher standard of debate and convince us of their own worth without calling into question the patriotism of their opponent. We must expect, no, demand that future candidates for office respect not only the country or the office for which they are running, but also the patriotism and sacrifice of their opponent and, above all, the intelligence of the electorate that they seek to represent.