Mudslinging is on an upward trend as fair politics can not always guarantee a victory for lawmakers and leaders alike.
Political campaigns are becoming more and more prevalent in the news this time of year as next fall a new president may be in store. With campaigns comes advertisements in numerous forms of media. These advertisements are mainly set out to promote a candidates strengths and what types of policies they hope to enact if elected to office. Typically these messages feature little talk about opponents and how they are inferior to the advertiser. But a trend has been set in GOP debates that features candidates using tactics of negative campaigning towards opponents.
For example, two front-runner candidates, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and current Texas governor Rick Perry, clearly do not like sharing the stage together during debates and they do not hold back on stage and in interviews. Any skeptics can witness the tension first hand by viewing a debate and watching the body language and rebuttals of the two candidates when the other is speaking, they just do not care for each other. Perry stated on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show that Romney is an “Obama-lite”. In other words, a watered down Republican version of President Barack Obama. Perry is notably seen as a far right Republican that has policies true to his parties philosophies, where as Romney has a more bi-partisan approach toward his actions while still remaining a Republican. Romney has more often than not been on the defense as Perry has established himself as the “attacker”, the candidate that goes after others policies in a means to expose their weaknesses.
There is no rule for how candidates are allowed to talk about each other in the public view, but they should ask themselves why are they saying what they say? It is only logical to question whether or not you should be “going after” one another on stage or in commercials. Do these candidates really think they should be name dropping their opponents instead of simply over-promoting themselves? I would have to believe that it is more logical to only self promote and not attack other candidates. If you see some of the commercials these candidates air, they are very self-centered and all about “me”. Why not focus those same principles on their debates and speaking engagements.
On the other hand, attacking has been typical for candidates. Going after opponents policies does expose weaknesses. For a candidate to openly “go after” opponents can prove to beneficial. When Perry states one of Romney’s policies is weak or will not help the nation, it possibly puts a damper on Romney’s campaign and in turn has him lose more supporters.
In my opinion, most people running for president have some serious egos and run for president because they have to feed that need to be on top. There can not be any harm in saying “I” many times in debates and commercials, viewers want to hear what you think and have to say. They probably do not want to hear about what kind of “dirt” you have on opponents.
The president is not necessarily the smartest guy, but the cleverest guy. He has the ability to sway millions of people and turn them on to his ideas and direct them away from his or her competitors.