Mudslinging Season
Opens On Television

When I was a teenager I had a brush with the law not long after my family moved to Watauga County. More of a misunderstanding than a real honest-to-goodness brush, the experience taught me a few lessons and brought my existence to the attention of then Watauga County Sheriff Ward Carroll.

Imagine my surprise when Sheriff Carroll pulled his brown and tan cruiser into our driveway a few months later. After exchanging pleasantries with my parents, he turned his attention to me.

“I see that today is your eighteenth birthday son,” said the stern but fair lawman. “I was hoping I could get you to register to vote as a Democrat.”

Not wanting to offend Sheriff Carroll or waste his precious time, I quickly signed a piece of paper registering me as a Democrat.

Thus was I introduced to politics as practiced in the South. We tend to take the personal approach to getting the job done.

If you like politics that puts an emphasis on personalities rather than public policy, this is your season. As we round the corner and head toward the home stretch of the mid-term elections, candidates in North Carolina and Tennessee have abandoned any discourse about their own records and intentions and have instead focused their attention on smearing their opponents.

Yes, from now until Election Day in November the gloves are off and we TV viewers and radio listeners will be witness to all manner of rumors, innuendo, mudslinging and character assassinations. Most Democrats will try to convince us their Republican opponents want to incite Muslims and Christians into a holy war to end all holy wars. And most Republicans will try to convince us that their Democratic opponents are hiding Al Qeida terrorists in their guest bedrooms.

Why would a political candidate stand in front of the camera and inform us about his or her beliefs and voting record when it is much more fun to tell us how their opponent would destroy the American family as we know it?

Many of the advertisements for avowed Republican candidates are warning us that Democrats want to “cut and run” when it comes to the War in Iraq. As far as I can figure, “cut and run” works for Republicans as a catchphrase because it sounds much more cowardly than the more accurate “we broke it, we have to buy it.”

Democrats, for their part, seem to be afraid to say anything of substance. They honestly seem to be biding their time, watching the opinion polls, waiting for the right time to leap out and state their policy, hoping that if they wait long enough theirs will be the message that sticks in the voters’ heads come early November. And we all remember how well that worked for Al Gore and John Kerry.

Another new trend in the political ads can be seen in the ones for younger Republican politicos. They talk about family values, wrap themselves in the American flag, but fail to mention anywhere in their ads that they are Republicans. They have this aura of shame about President Bush as if he were some drunken uncle who showed up at the church picnic with a lampshade on his head and made inappropriate remarks to the girls in the youth choir. That’s quite a change from two years ago when such politicians couldn’t hold on tighter to Bush’s coattails if they’d been born with vice grips for fingers.

Where is the source for this disavowing of Bush and his policies? Is it the fact that we as taxpayers have spent over $300 billion on the War in Iraq with no end in sight? Or is it the fact that over 2,686 US military personnel have died fighting in Iraq? Maybe it’s the fact that after 9/11 we (meaning the public and both Houses of Congress) gave the President a blank check when it came to deciding how to fight terrorism and he has spent the money (and our trust) most unwisely. His policies, as one pundit put it, are making enemies faster than we can kill them.

One of the nastiest political campaigns being waged this season is the one between Republican Bob Corker and Democrat Harold Ford Jr., both vying for the Senate seat vacated by Tennessee’s Bill Frist. In Ford’s ads he accuses Corker of being responsible for thousands of unanswered 911 phone calls while he was Mayor of Chattanooga (I didn’t know that was part of a mayor’s job). Corker’s ads try to remind voters of scandals attributed to Ford’s father and uncles and call the young candidate a “career politician” despite the fact that both men have spent the same amount of time in public service. Both sides are being disingenuous to the point of dishonesty and it says something about the television media in Tennessee that such ads are allowed to air at all.

So as we slide toward mudslinging season proper, I hope voters remember to do a little fact-checking on the various candidates’ stands, beliefs and voting records. It’s not like we can count on them to tell us anything of substance about themselves in their negative campaign ads.