This is a weird semester to be abroad. I spend my days riding my bicycle blissfully down the streets of Copenhagen, admiring the smiling Danes, and my nights huddled in my computer chair, watching America fall to pieces.
The election is a particularly fascinating and horrifying spectacle. I find that the most appropriate lens through which to view it is that of my "Ethnic Conflict in Modern States" course. The class's concept of the "security dilemma" is informative.
I will briefly outline it here (IR majors may send complaints and corrections to letters@browndailyherald.com). The idea is that two entities, be they states, groups or individuals, acting in the interest of their own security, take steps that eventually compromise the security of all parties involved. The arms race of the Cold War would have been a good example of this if anyone had actually gotten nuked.
In the case of the election, the parties involved are the parties involved, Democratic and Republican. The security-oriented buildup has been the growing number of misleading comments and attack ads released by both sides. I'll play to my audience and start with McCain.
One of the best examples of an unfounded attack is the advertisement in which the campaign accuses Obama of referring to Sarah Palin when he said, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." It is logically impossible that Obama was actually talking about the Vice Presidential nominee, because unlike a pig, Palin is hot.
Maybe if he had said something about putting lipstick on a cougar... but I digress. This is no more than a slanderous attempt by the McCain campaign to paint Obama as out-of-touch with the common man's taste in women.
Another example of misleading advertising is a McCain campaign ad which states that Obama is in favor of "comprehensive sexual-education for kindergartners." No one would support this plan outside of the Brown Gender and Sexuality Studies department, and naturally middle-America was up in arms.
However, it was quickly revealed that the bill Obama voted for actually recommended teaching kindergartners how to avoid sexual predators. Apparently the McCain campaign is trying to lock up the pedophile vote with this advertisement. It could be the difference in Florida.
So far, this seems less like a security dilemma than an all-out assault, but the response from the Obama campaign saves the analogy. To avoid an attack-ads missile gap, Obama played defense with offense, releasing ads of his own. One example is a Spanish-language ad linking John McCain with Rush Limbaugh that plays aremark from Limbaugh in which he called Mexicans "stupid and unqualified."
The Obama campaign could have gone further. If you can link McCain to Limbaugh you should break out one of his more colorful quotations, such as: "Hugo, Cesar - whatever. A Chavez is a Chavez. We've always had problems with them." The point is that this ad is misleading. Limbaugh and McCain have often butted heads over immigration. With this ad, Obama perpetuates the security dilemma by attacking, even if it was for defensive reasons.
So what is lost, what is compromised by this political arms race? It is the integrity of the candidates, which will soon mean the integrity of the president. It threatens the political capital that either candidate would be able to expend in office.
The campaign process drags down even well-meaning candidates as they defend against unwarranted attacks. Obama may have promised "a new kind of politics," but as the race went on it became clear to him and everyone in his campaign that the new kind of politics is the kind of politics that loses elections.
McCain learned this lesson after his campaign in 2000 against President Bush. If you don't come out fighting, Karl Rove will convince a bunch of racist South Carolinians that you had an illegitimate black child. So this time around, McCain played the political game, correcting his more liberal positions for the Republican primary, courting some "agents of intolerance," and indulging in the kind of attack ads that he has decried in the past.
I'm not blaming these candidates for being normal politicians. Hell, if I were running for office I'd lie my head off to get elected. They are just products of a system that encourages and rewards this kind of behavior.
Now how do we fix this? I'd tell you but I've reached my word limit.
Sam Loomis '10 is reporting from Scandinavia, the land of fairies and elves.
