John McCain, John Kerry and Al Gore encountered the same problem when facing a mediocre candidate for the presidency, a well oiled negative attack machine led by the evil political genius Karl Rove. The genius of Rove's strategy was avoid the issues since we will lose with Bush Jr us our candidate but focus on assassinating the character of the opponent. Sen McCain had fallen victim to Rove's whisper campaign that McCain had a black child (The McCains have an adopted daughter from Bangladesh.) Furthermore, Bush camp strove to delicately discredit McCain's Vietnam service, despite his well documented capture and torture by the enemy.
Next, Rove pulled the elitist card on both Gore and Kerry in the 2000 and 2004 elections. They also consistently used the fear card to portray "Dubya", and by extension the Republicans, as the only one who could fight terror following the September 11th attacks. And who can forget the Swiftboat attacks against Kerry, the word became part of the political lexicon of how to perfect a smear campaign. Once again, like McCain before him, Kerry soon found himself defending his well documented service in Vietnam. Rove had perfected the art of character assassination.
Ironically, McCain was so embittered by Rove's successful tactics that he is alleged to have hired dear old Karl for the upcoming elections. Sample Exhibit A.
Even after promising to run a respectful campaign, it is hard to see how this advert reflects on Sen. McCain's respect for his colleague. When confronted on this ad in a Town Hall meeting in Racine Wisconsin, Sen McCain responded that he was very proud of this advert since it brought out the distinctions in the candidates.
So how do you succeed against such an onslaught? Well Sen. Obama may have provided us with an answer: by consistently focusing on the issues and with humor and grace!
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