[Vision2020] A token from the soul man

[No Weatherman]

Going Negative!
That's what the media cry when you accurately present the track record
of liberal candidates.

By Thomas Sowell

One of the oldest phenomena of American elections — criticism of one's
opponent — has in recent times been stigmatized by much of the media
as "negative advertising."

Is this because the criticism has gotten more vicious or more
personal? You might think so, if you were totally ignorant of history,
as so many of the graduates of even our elite universities are.

Although Grover Cleveland was elected president twice, he had to
overcome a major scandal that he had fathered a child out of wedlock,
which was considered more of a disgrace then than today. Even giants
like Lincoln and Jefferson were called names that neither McCain nor
Obama has been called.

Why then is "negative advertising" such a big deal these days? The
dirty little secret is this: Liberal candidates have needed to escape
their past and pretend that they are not liberals, because so many
voters have had it with liberals.

In 1988, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts called himself a
"technocrat," a pragmatic solver of problems, despite a classic
liberal track record of big spending, big taxes, and policies that
were anti-business and pro-criminal.

When the truth about what he actually did as governor was brought out
during the presidential election campaign, the media were duly shocked
— not by Dukakis's record, but by the Republicans' exposing his
record.

John Kerry, with a very similar ultra-liberal record, topped off by
inflammatory and unsubstantiated attacks on American military men in
Vietnam, disdained the whole process of labeling as something
unworthy. And the mainstream media closed ranks around him as well,
deploring those who labeled Kerry a liberal.

Barack Obama is much smoother. Instead of issuing explicit denials, he
gives speeches that sound so moderate, so nuanced, and so lofty that
even some conservative Republicans go for them. How could anyone
believe that such a man is the very opposite of what he claims to be —
unless they check out the record of what he has actually done?

In words, Obama is a uniter instead of a divider. In deeds, he has
spent years promoting polarization. That is what a "community
organizer" does — creating a sense of grievance, envy, and resentment
— in order to mobilize political action to get more of the taxpayers'
money or to force banks to lend to people they don't consider good
risks, as the community organizing group ACORN did.

After Barack Obama moved beyond the role of a community organizer, he
promoted the same polarization in his other roles.

That is what he did when he spent the money of the Woods Fund
bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and
resentment into the schools. That is what he did when he spent the
taxpayers' money bankrolling the grievance and resentment ideology of
Michael Pfleger.

When Barack Obama donated $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, does anyone
imagine that he was unaware that Wright was the epitome of grievance,
envy, and resentment hype? Or were Wright's sermons too subtle for
Obama to pick up that message?

How subtle is "Goddamn America!"?

Yet those in the media who deplore "negative advertising" regard it as
unseemly to dig up ugly facts instead of sticking to the beautiful
rhetoric of an election year. The oft-repeated mantra is that we
should trick to the "real issues."

What are called "the real issues" are election-year talking points,
while the actual track record of the candidates is treated as a
distraction — and somehow an unworthy distraction.

Does anyone in real life put more faith in what people say than in
what they do? A few gullible people do — and they often get deceived
and defrauded big time.

Barack Obama has carried election-year makeovers to a new high,
presenting himself as a uniter of people, someone reaching across the
partisan divide and the racial divide — after decades of promoting
polarization in each of his successive roles and each of his choices
of political allies.

Yet the media treat exposing a fraudulent election-year image as far
worse than letting someone acquire the powers of the highest office in
the land through sheer deception.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2RkMzA2ZGUyNGE1OTQ2MmY1Y2YzYzI1NWViOGFhNTY=