Posted by Shyam Moondra
Lately, Sen. John McCain and his running-mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have been using extreme tactics against Sen. Barack Obama that are totally out of line and are very damaging to our democratic process.
Bill Ayers, who is now a university professor, committed terrorist acts to show his opposition to the Vietnam war at a time when Obama was just eight years old. A few years ago, Obama and Ayers had brief association because they both served as board members in connection with community projects in Chicago area. Ayers is not an Obama advisor nor he is in any way involved in Obama's presidential campaign. Given these facts, this is a huge stretch to use this brief association between the two men as a basis to imply that Obama may be a "terrorist." This is a smear tactic, plain and simple.
McCain and Palin have also implied that Obama may be a "corrupt" Chicago politician or he is "dangerous" or he has "character" problems. These are all flimsy charges without any proof to support any of these charges. McCain's surrogates have called Obama "unpatriotic" and they have used Obama's middle name "Hussein" to imply that he may be a Muslim even though they know that he is in fact a Christian.
During the first debate, McCain was visibly angry and disrespectful towards Obama that didn't win McCain any points in the eyes of many voters. During the second debate, McCain referred to Obama, his colleague in the Senate, as "That one," which was totally uncalled for.
McCain has been utterly ineffective in articulating his vision for the pressing problems of economy, jobs, health care, and education that the American people have been dying to hear about. McCain has impulsively offered flawed solutions or said something and then changed or retracted his solutions or comments. That makes him look indecisive and confused.
McCain's erratic leadership and his extremism have in fact hurt him because a majority of Americans believe in fair play and they are not happy at the political terrorism being practiced by McCain and Palin. McCain has run a dishonest and dishonorable campaign, second only to Richard Nixon.
McCain should be careful not to enrage his hard-core racist supporters to the point that one of them may contemplate to assassinate Obama or if McCain loses, Obama may have a hard time to govern. Just because you can't win, it doesn't mean that you unfairly torpedo your opponent's chances to govern and do the good work for the country. Country comes first, which means keeping the political discourse civil and fair.
Most polls indicate that Obama may be headed to a landslide victory, so McCain and Palin should tone-down their extreme rhetoric and be mindful that if Obama wins he should have an environment where all the people could work together to solve tough problems we face as a nation.
