So many skeletons in the candidates' closets
04 November 2008 à 10h32
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An "illegal alien" aunt, a junkie wife: rumors about Barack Obama and John McCain won’t stop until the last minute of the vote. An A to Z of the image battle.
It used to be that only accused criminals had to be worried that anything they said could be used against them. But in the age of Facebook, YouTube and Google, politicians are learning the hard way that dumb things they did or said will be immediately used against them by their opponents.
Who is to blame for all these revelations? By and large, the parties themselves.
These last weeks, teams of partisan researchers from the two parties have been trolling the Internet looking for anything that might be used against the other side. During the campaign, each war room is ready to pounce on anything stupid the opponent does, whip up a press release, and send it to every political journalist in the country.
The parties also admit that they rely on local political activists to make sure their candidates have no skeletons in the closet. Each candidate has a special team only dedicated to doing criminal checks and credit history checks from easily searchable databases.
The story of Barack Obama’s aunt who was denied asylum and instructed to leave the US in 2004 is the latest that has been dropped by the Republicans to unhinge the candidate in the very few days left. But on each side, there have been plenty of revelations, on the candidates themselves as on the running mates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.
McCain has not been spared either. They were rumours of adultery at first, spread last February by the New York Times, which ran a big article about the unusually close relationship between John McCain and a young and pretty telecommunications lobbyist. In addition, the story of his « junkie wife » Cindy McCain, who was a serious narcotics addict for a while, having heavy backache problems, came early in the campaign. Last month, the story came out of Mr McCain’s long incarceration in Vietnam, which may not have been as hard as he told it was at first, as his former prison director in Hanoi denied in an interview that McCain was ever tortured back then.
Of course, the running mates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, have taken their share of the offensive. She has been crucified when her daughter’s pregnancy went public, accused of shopping with public money, of hiring unqualified friends for high-paid government jobs and various other things, and Joe Biden was humiliated when it came out that he had plagiarized a speech from a Bristish politician back in 1988.
In the end, whatever rumors are, only their impact matters…
It used to be that only accused criminals had to be worried that anything they said could be used against them. But in the age of Facebook, YouTube and Google, politicians are learning the hard way that dumb things they did or said will be immediately used against them by their opponents.
Who is to blame for all these revelations? By and large, the parties themselves.
These last weeks, teams of partisan researchers from the two parties have been trolling the Internet looking for anything that might be used against the other side. During the campaign, each war room is ready to pounce on anything stupid the opponent does, whip up a press release, and send it to every political journalist in the country.
The parties also admit that they rely on local political activists to make sure their candidates have no skeletons in the closet. Each candidate has a special team only dedicated to doing criminal checks and credit history checks from easily searchable databases.
The story of Barack Obama’s aunt who was denied asylum and instructed to leave the US in 2004 is the latest that has been dropped by the Republicans to unhinge the candidate in the very few days left. But on each side, there have been plenty of revelations, on the candidates themselves as on the running mates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.
Nobody spared
The Democrat candidate Barack Obama has been the most attacked, most probably because of the color of his skin and the symbol he now represents. One of the first rumors was relayed by The New York Times, which ran a front-page article on the candidate’s alleged link to former Weathermen bomber William Ayers, only to conclude that they were mere acquaintances. Among others, Fox News ran a story claiming that Obama had been educated in a Madrassa school in Indonesia (a type of fundamentalist Muslim school, mainly funded by the extremist Wahabi sect of Islam, often very anti-American). There have been several other stories about Obama floating around in emails, like his relationship with his controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that he is secretly Muslim, or refuses to put his hand over his heart when saying the pledge of allegiance.McCain has not been spared either. They were rumours of adultery at first, spread last February by the New York Times, which ran a big article about the unusually close relationship between John McCain and a young and pretty telecommunications lobbyist. In addition, the story of his « junkie wife » Cindy McCain, who was a serious narcotics addict for a while, having heavy backache problems, came early in the campaign. Last month, the story came out of Mr McCain’s long incarceration in Vietnam, which may not have been as hard as he told it was at first, as his former prison director in Hanoi denied in an interview that McCain was ever tortured back then.
Of course, the running mates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, have taken their share of the offensive. She has been crucified when her daughter’s pregnancy went public, accused of shopping with public money, of hiring unqualified friends for high-paid government jobs and various other things, and Joe Biden was humiliated when it came out that he had plagiarized a speech from a Bristish politician back in 1988.
In the end, whatever rumors are, only their impact matters…
