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So,
Tell Me About "Change" Again...
EDITORIAL
Frank Salvato
September 9, 2003 |
The liberal bastion, The
New York Times, has queried as to what the correct balance of personal
and political information should be for the Democratic presidential
candidates. Citing that some are leaning heavily on their experiences of
growing up in Heartland, USA, and others are focusing completely on their
political careers, they pose the question of what the formula should be this
time around. Isn’t that just like the New York Times? Once again they
have missed the big picture. What the people want is much simpler than any
formula that James Carville, Terry McAuliffe or
the New York Times could come up with.
All the voters of the United States really want to hear about a politician
is what they can do to make things better for them. It is that plain and it
is that simple. We don’t want to hear about whether someone smoked pot or
whether he or she has had affairs. We don’t want to hear one politician
attacking another politician in an attempt to sway our opinion of one over
the other. We don’t want to choose between the lesser of the two evils.
That’s what reality TV is for. Quite frankly, if you sold tickets to an
ultimate fighting contest (you know the ones - the illegal ones where people
fight to the death?) where politicians were involved the populace would more
than likely flock to the events, that’s how contemptible negative, formula
politics has become to the mainstream American people. That should have been
completely evident at the end of the 2000 Presidential Election fiasco when
Al Gore faded to black yet the machine that is politico is amazingly slow to
learn.
"What is it that the people want to hear from a politician?” is quite an
easy question to answer. They want to know how they would make the economy
stronger not how the other person will make it weaker. They want to know how
they are going to handle the border problem not how bad it was under past
administrations. They want to know how they will restructure the Medicare
program and how they are going to make prescription drug benefits a reality
for all not how the other candidates’ plans are not as good or who failed to
come up with a plan. They want to hear about how they are going to protect
the populace from maniacs slamming jetliners into skyscrapers not
self-serving political propaganda against what is being done about it now.
Simply put, they want to hear the person who is running for office pro-sell
him or herself not tear down the other person. The American people are tired
of negative campaigning and fed-up with political snake-oil salesmen.
Bill
Clinton and his band of spurious spin doctors used the media to sell
his line of propaganda for eight years and counting, and when I say used I
mean like a heartless power broker who would use a not-so-intelligent,
star-struck, intoxicated-by-power intern in need of self-esteem and a life
at inappropriate times and in inappropriate places just to feed his gigantic
ego. He sold the country on a word; change. In each of his speeches prior to
becoming president he focused on the word change while tearing down the
performance of the man who held the job he wanted. But when one looks back
at those speeches one can see that he never really told anyone what it was
he would do to change anything. He gave no specifics and only spoke in
generalization, not unlike those who are running for the Democratic
Presidential Nomination today. When one looks back on the job that Bill
Clinton did during the eight contentious years he was in office it is hard
to see what he changed at all except for putting in place a falsely based
economic environment, depleting the effectiveness of our intelligence and
military communities and introducing the multiple uses for heavy-duty stain
remover. He sold the country on the benefits of change yet we benefited from
nothing. Unless you were a dot-com CEO who went IPO you were SOL.
In this fast-paced world of the sitcom attention span it is easy to fall
prey to the sensationalism that is used in the marketing sector. People and
things are packaged to sell everyday. Our capitalistic system thrives on it.
But we as a people, as shoppers, know that we have to shop for the best
deal. If we heard a commercial for stain remover that said, "Buy our product
because the other one doesn’t work, " most people’s initial reaction would
be, "Yeah, but does yours work?” This is the mentality we have to use when
we shop for our elected officials.
We shouldn’t rely on "product endorsement” or deceptive advertising when it
comes to those who would run our country. We cannot afford to buy into
negative advertising, or the negative spin about the competition. It is time
that we asked those who want to lead us, and that is what they want to do –
run the country, what they plan to do to make this country a better, more
prosperous, more secure place to live and to bring up our children. It is
important to know what they can do and not just what the other ones can’t.
So far, listening to the Democratic candidates, I haven’t heard anything
about what they plan to do if elected to make this country a better place to
live, I have only heard that it isn’t a good place to live and I
wholeheartedly disagree.
Frank Salvato is a
political media consultant and the managing editor for The New Media Journal.us. He is a
contributing writer for The Washington Dispatch, GOPUSA, OpinionEditorials,
Men’s News Daily, Canada Free Press & AmericanDaily. His pieces are
regularly featured in Townhall.com. He has appeared as a guest on The
O’Reilly Factor, The Kevin Matthews Radio Show (Chicago) and The Brad Messer
Radio Show (San Antonio). His pieces have been recognized by the Japan
Center for Conflict Prevention and are occasionally featured in The
Washington Times and The London Morning Paper as well as other national and
international publications.
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