Oh, poor New York Times, editorializing in a piece titled So Far Over the Line that the McCain-Obama race has become mired in “gone negative” attacks.
This year’s presidential campaign has already been marked by far too much negative advertising, with coded racial images and sophomoric insults. It was outrageous when Mr. McCain’s campaign juxtaposed Mr. Obama with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as part of its effort to denigrate him as a person, rather than debating him on this country’s huge problems.. . . Madonna’s video is immeasurably worse. If she thought she was helping Mr. Obama by juxtaposing his image with that of Gandhi and Bono, she was wrong.
This stuff has been going on for hundreds of years. Watch the excellent series The Presidents on the History Channel to get a sense of how earlier campaigns treated Tyler, Lincoln, Cleveland, Truman and others. More importantly, what the Times fails to realize is that neither of these candidates can run on their records — run AWAY is more like it — and both are transitioning (i.e., flip-flopping) from primary positions to general election moderation. The race is negative because attacks work and because the puffery about respect and elevating American political rhetoric was just that….a bunch of hot air.