Sunday, September 28, 2008

Semantics and posturing

So how different is it to say "My opponent is right when he says X" rather than "X is true..."?

Much ado has been made by The bobbleheads... er.. talking heads in the media about the fact that Obama said several times that McCain was right about one thing or another being an issue. No one points out that when Obama did this, he proceeded to suggest that McCain's plan for dealing with that issue was wrong, even though his identification of the issue itself was right.

Why is it that even the suggestion of agreement is seen as a weakness? Is there any way to truly have a government of the people without recognizing that there are disagreements among those people? McCain's campaign of course immediately released an ad showing Obama saying McCain is right, so that would seem to be a poor choice of words on Obama's part.

Perhaps next time it can be "It is true that X is a problem in our country. However, the Republicans have shown that their handling of X has been lacking yadda yadda yadda." I fail to see how one could honestly pretend that everything ones opponent says is wrong (McCain's doing it, but he abandoned honesty weeks ago... it's no longer surprising.)

I feel that this weird debate theater highlights some problems with our "Two Party" system... because the 2 parties aren't really sufficiently different for them to simply present the truth and let the people decide. If the parties must manufacture difference and highlight dissent, perhaps they're not really different enough in their policies and their governance.

1 comment:

Howard said...

Well that's what Nader says. Then again, if Gore had won, don't you think the world would be a different place? It is true that both parties campaign pretty similarly and the media over-reacts to the sound-bites they put out. That is truely broken as the Daily Show demonstrates every night. Then again, Obama's campaign is a bit different. If Hillary had won I think she and McCain would have been more similar.