Smear campaigns
Posted by Little Ms Purple at 1/15/2008 2:57 PM 
Categories: 2008 Election, Political strategies, All Posts, Scandalous
Categories: 2008 Election, Political strategies, All Posts, Scandalous
I was in the process of posting about a site I came across called Votegopher (a site started by a college student as a place where you can find out about each of the candidates positions on all the issues from an unbiased viewpoint) when I got an email in my inbox from an old colleague of mine that was a "push email" smear on Senator Obama.
I'm not going to get into the details as I'm out of the smearing business but I will say that the email mixed some accurate biographical information with untruthful smears, thus appearing credible. As long time readers will know, I experienced the same thing while working on McCain's campaign in 2000 in South Carolina. In that campaign, they used the fact that Senator McCain has an adopted daughter from Bangladesh to form a "push poll" question that inferred that she was an illegitimate black child. Factual information mixed with lies equals question mark... and McCain's loss.
As I've said before, the problem with our current political environment is that there are no referees to call foul or throw a flag when the above mentioned smears take place and the Internet and robo calls make it that much harder. Lastly, though, I do want to say that going after a politician's voting record, legislative record and personal indiscretions are fair game if they are the truth. Voters deserve to know the truth but unfortunately, it's too hard to resist throwing in some fiction during the heat of a campaign.
I'm not going to get into the details as I'm out of the smearing business but I will say that the email mixed some accurate biographical information with untruthful smears, thus appearing credible. As long time readers will know, I experienced the same thing while working on McCain's campaign in 2000 in South Carolina. In that campaign, they used the fact that Senator McCain has an adopted daughter from Bangladesh to form a "push poll" question that inferred that she was an illegitimate black child. Factual information mixed with lies equals question mark... and McCain's loss.
As I've said before, the problem with our current political environment is that there are no referees to call foul or throw a flag when the above mentioned smears take place and the Internet and robo calls make it that much harder. Lastly, though, I do want to say that going after a politician's voting record, legislative record and personal indiscretions are fair game if they are the truth. Voters deserve to know the truth but unfortunately, it's too hard to resist throwing in some fiction during the heat of a campaign.
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