As the date of Nov. 6, 2012 approaches us, it is time for a candidate to be elected as the president of the United States of America. The lineup of candidates includes President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. As I look at these candidates I begin to ask myself some questions. Which is the best person to be the next president of the United States of America? What will advertising be like?
As far as I can remember, presidential elections have always had numerous amounts of mudslinging in every candidate’s commercials.
Mudslinging is when one is trying to win an advantage by referring to negative aspects of an opponent rather than emphasizing one’s own positive attributes. This leads me to my third question: should there be some type of advertisement rules to eliminate the trashy, negative ad campaigns and to make the candidates stick to the facts?
I believe these days candidates run moderately similar ads that make vague promises about things such as plans to decrease taxes, and then attack the other party with different degrees of viciousness. But eventually someone gets elected and without doubt has to work with the opposing party that they attacked and were attacked by. It is clear that the system is terribly differential.
Instead of bringing as many Americans as possible together to have the right ideas of getting the country out of hard times, this system causes most Americans to go around thinking that the “other” side is stupid or that “both” sides are wrong, so why even bother choosing one?
In our country there has been a growing trend of communities as a whole becoming increasingly defined by political identity. The result of this is that people don’t have conversations with people of differing political ideals and don’t know how to deal with folks from the opposing side when engaged in a meaningful political discussion.
Politicized news-media sources and political campaigns only add fuel to the flame. I think that individual Democrats, Republicans, and all other parties ought to recognize that these factors benefit no one and are generally detrimental to us as a country on the whole. We should start talking to each other and work together to counteract politicians, this would help things greatly.
As a result of mudslinging, there are plenty of people interested in serving the greater good of this country through politics who unfortunately are forced into the negative campaign game.
I’d like to make a plan that I hope to get a chance to act upon myself in the future, by starting up community political discussion groups that would foster healthy debate with an emphasis on approaching facts with an open mind. Most importantly, get local political organizations from all sides involved as well as ordinary citizens. This plan is a little impractical, but with fewer barriers that people put up in formal speeches, advertisements, media announcements, and commitments to partisanship I think we as citizens can work toward a more honest, productive political system.
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