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Negative energy
tudents running for class offices and student
council seats have taken lessons from the recently
concluded presidential campaigns, according to a wire story that made the rounds last week. Let’s hope they are shaping their pitches and their behavior after the right model.
Republicans already are deep into their soulsearching after last week's drubbing in the presidential contest and after significant setbacks on Capitol Hill. The brand, one prominent local GOP loyalist told us in the run-up to the election, is damaged beyond immediate repair. Conservative columnists are now cranking out hand-wringing copy about how the party has run out of ideas.
The primary reason for the Republican embarrassment is far simpler and easily corrected: John McCain and Sarah Palin ran an abysmal campaign.
It is now abundantly clear that the American people have absolutely had it with negative campaigning, which is all that McCain and Palin had to offer as Nov. 4 approached.
Campaigning on what they would do for America and Americans — in all four debates, in all the hundreds of rallies and campaign appearances, in all of the aired ads — was virtually non-existent. Seemingly, all they had to talk about was Obama — the risks, the radicals, the ramifications.
Without question, McCain and Palin had something to offer the American people. You'd never know it from their public presentations.
We are sick to death of negative campaigning. Certainly, they were not guiltless, but the Democrats understood this far better than the Republicans. The GOP isn't out of fresh ideas, but the two principal candidates bypassed nearly every opportunity to express them in favor of attacking their opponent.
We'd love to see the Commission on Presidential Debates come up with some new guidelines for the future: That debates will, in fact, be town hall meetings, where the candidates face questions directly from the voters. And the moderator has only one critical function: To turn off a candidate's microphone as soon as he or she begins to drift from a discussion of personal and party aspirations and starts in on the opponent's shortfalls.
We don't want to hear about what an idiot your opponent is. We want to hear how smart you are.
John McCain and Sarah Palin didn’t get that. If their party in general doesn't come to some understanding, either, the GOP will be sitting on the sidelines for many elections to come.
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