by Maurice Sassoon

Created on: October 21, 2008

The reason behind negative advertising is to insure that the candidate, indulging in such advertising, could garner votes in his favor. Negative advertising is not new to the United States. It was prevalent in the past, is happening in the present, and will continue in the future. Politics is, indeed, a medium through which candidates have the license to falsify a statement or to confirm its veracity, as long as it fulfills a particular purpose. It seems the negativity of advertising accelerates toward the end of the campaign. There is a consensus of opinion about politicians whose objectives must be met under all circumstances: They present themselves as being truthful in all respects, but are, in fact, liars in certain respects. Their assertions that they could effect favorable changes in the affairs of the country, is far from the truth. Changes cannot happen immediately. To clean the economical and political mess, a whole lot of needs must be met, contingent upon the slow-moving acts of Congress that might be so protracted that the first two years of the presidency might not witness any approval or disapporoval of any bill that imight be pending.

In the current election between Obama and McCain, negative advertising has culminated to such a degree that one wonders whether the candidates mean what they say. The underlying reason, as voters know fully well, is for one candidate to outclass the other in the polls by playing on the mediocrity of those whose credulity is up for grabs. The circumstances under which the present election is progressing seems bizaare, in the sense that it appears as if money has become so instrumental in obtaining votes that the absence of reasoning seems to gain the upperhand over discretion and rationality. At the same time, the involvement of the media tends to, perhaps, over-exaggerate the ebb and flow of the electoral process, even to the extent of favoring one against the other.

Never has it been previously recorded, in the history of U.S. elections, that the hackneyed rethorics of any popular candidate, such as those of Obama, could impress diverse sections of society, whose belief that past failures could be substituted for success in many fields of government, within the duration of the office of the presidency. This could not happen, no matter how sincere and hardworking the president might be The effect of the trite and falsified statements of the candidates would not be felt immediately, but long after the president takes office. This might, perhaps, happen in the latter years of the president's term of office.

In the meantime, the license to indulge in negative advertising is used freely, in the political arena, It is a trend that has its rootes in past elections, in which the public has no jurisdiction, other than commenting on the pros and cons of a candidate's background. In the meanwhile, the wheel of negativity keeps turning, fueled by the apparent credulity of voters in a democratic process that must take its course.

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