Might we now bury the
slash and burn style of politics? November 6, 2008
Karl Rove, the current
guru of the attack style of operating a campaign has been championed by
the far right. He is widely credited for creating the slash and burn
tactical approach to campaign messages.
I am not sure that he
can get total credit, because my misfortune for being my age is the memory
of a campaign conducted in 1972. It was Nixon Vs McGovern and that
campaign fashioned advertising that traded on the fears of the electorate.
For example, a message
aimed at white society portrayed a McGovern administration as going way
too far with equal right, reparations and more. For the straight
community it was all about painting the picture of granting to the gay
community special rights and so on. For every compartment of our
populace there was a specially designed communiqué that would bring
out the worst fear in their polar opposite.
Does that sound familiar?
Not sure? What about the Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright commercials
aimed at our new President Elect? Were you someone that received
one or more “robo-calls” during the last week or so of our recent election
season? If so you were a target of the slash and burn.
If I was asked to evaluate
the efficacy of these ads, I would have to decide the answer was not at
all because the Senator from Illinois is the President-Elect. I would
hope that defeat following defeat by those of us that are put-off by this
tactical approach.
To gain a sense of the
non-Rove origins take a shot at a book by Theodore H. White, “The making
of the President 1972”. If you do I think you will discover the true
origin of this spurious manner of campaigning.
Each of us is sufficiently
hard-wired to formulate biases completely on our own let alone being driven
to prejudice by someone else via these negative messages. Perhaps
further effort in campaign reform would eliminate such an abhorrent technique.
Would someone please tell
me when the funeral is scheduled?
