Personal Attacks

If you took the Republican party at its word, you'd have to believe that they have no sense of reality. In politics, of course, it seems that folks rarely speak the truth. Spin rules and reality luks somewhere under the couch cushions with the pennies and popcorn kernels.

Today, the Obama campaign released a spot emphasizing that McCain is out of touch, but speaking nothing but the facts: he can't use a computer (completely relevant in the Internet age and world of cyber-terrorism), doesn't know much about the economy, and puts a heavier emphasis on corporate tax cuts than helping the middle class. I'm having a problem seeing how these attacks are "personal." Personal attacks are the ones like the despicable recent attack levied against Obama by the McCain camp; the attack which digustingly distorted his record on education reform to make it seem as though he wanted to teach Kindergarteners about sex instead of how to protect themselves against predators. That's personal.

Obama's response to McCain's nasty ad was also personal. In the response, the Obama camp questioned McCain's honor, saying, "Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why." While the Obama camp may have interpreted that truth (McCain actually told the interviewer to go read the five books he wrote to get his answer), it was essentially the truth. Stating it the way they did, though, does seem a bit personal. The Obama camp, however, had every right to be outraged.

According to the AP, "A spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Alex Conant, accused Obama of 'trying to destroy' McCain and running mate Sarah Palin with personal attacks." How this ad does anything to Sarah Palin is beyond me. And how speaking the truth about McCain is a personal attack stretches the definition. But this is politics, spin is spin. It's going to be a long 52 days.

Cross posted to AshPolitics