As a communicator bound by PRSA ethics guidelines, should this statement be denounced?

What do you know … this story is about NC State Sen. Kay Hagan has been running against US Sen. Elizabeth Dole, but I thought it might enlighten some readers.

If you want to do something funny and worthwhile, compare the McCain and Obama votes. You’ll find they vote together most of the time too.

Ho hum. This election, please don’t subscribe and promote sound bites for either side.

The Bush administration, not unlike the Clinton, Bush and Reagan administrations that preceded it, has used obfuscation, lies of omission and fabrication in order to push forward it’s agenda for the country. However, this administration represents the spirit of the Republican party in name only, as I think we can all agree that it has done little to reduce the size of government, increase and protect the freedom of it’s citizenry or make any attempts to limit the influence of government in the lives of it’s citizens.

The campaign tactics exhibited by both parties are dishonest, Obama has stretched the truth, used rigged statistics and made plenty of half-true statemens or lied through omission.

McCain’s campaign seems (at least base on my daily reading of FactCheck.org updates) to have utilized these tools more often, but the issue of ethical campaigning has not been broached by either party, nor by it’s candidates.

What I find most unfortunate is that this issue is being discussed in very few venues, when it should at the top of our list for vetting the candidate which we will support (for the record I support neither Obama or McCain and remain an undecided independent). Electing someone to the most powerful position in our country (if not the world) based on warm, fuzzy feelings is a disturbing thought, but in many ways that is what our election process has become. Whoever makes you feel warm and safe gets your vote, regardless of how their policies may effect your life.

Unethical campaign communications make the electorate more prone to voting on their gut feelings to a candidate than to being an educated voter and understanding what your actually voting for. An undereducated electorate is an extreme danger to a democratic form of government and at it’s heart that is what this form of communication has at it’s core. Neither campaign wants voters to understand, accept and vote for them because they agree with their policy ideals, they want people to vote for them because they “feel” better about them than they do the other guy.

McCain has managed to assume the mantle of change by blaming this country’s ills on a Congress that has been controlled by the Democrats for less than 2 years. Obama has attempted to lay all of our countries ills at the foot of the President and the man who he views as his legitimate successor in the person of John McCain. Neither of them are correct, for neither can truly assume the mantle of change. Their campaigning style aside, I feel as if we are going to have to suffer through a lot more of the same out of Washington until the people of this country realize that sending the same people to Washington year after year is unaccetpable and that the only way to truly affect change to our political system is to remove the old guard Washington elite and replace them with candidates who will accept things like public financing of political campaigns and term limits for congress. The congressional elections are overlooked during Presidential cycles and ignored during mid-term elections. Ethical campaigning aside, our system won’t change until voters change it.

As to “stealing the mantle of change”, I believe I outlined how there is no theft if the two sides can’t agree on the term. One is “regime change,” the other is “change from politics as usual.”

One thing I loved about the Democratic primaries was the number of debates. It’s be great if the candidates toured the country together and debated in every state for 50 days. I think it would be so much more substantive.