For obvious reasons I’ve been paying closer attention to this year’s US elections than I have to previous ones. That’s not been too hard, given the plethora of information available across hundreds of websites, and since the British media seem to be covering these elections in more detail than they have for a while.
Much discussion has gone into the amount of negative campaigning which dogged the democrat primaries and which is now rearing its head in a big way in the main campaign. Negative campaigning very quickly becomes a vicious circle with candidates spending so much time defending from each others’ latest barrage that the lower energy option of replying in kind is all they can manage. Whichever candidate launches the first or loudest attack is allowed to define the agenda until their opponent finds a more severe smear.
In recent years this has led to a variety of terms taking on a pejorative profile. The word ’liberal’ is a case in point, which it often seems has become a slanderous term, rather than a rough description of a political tendency.
Even if you don’t agree with their political bias, you don’t need to lean liberal in your allegiances to sympathise with Walter Cronkite’s call at Alternet for John Kerry to stand up for his liberalism. Surely a much clearer statement of what a candidate actually believes in and why they believe in it, has to be better than the current situation where each candidate tries harder to define their opponent than themself?