For better or for worse, we're closing in on another election in November. It seems a bit sudden for me because I still haven't finished complaining about the last one. While we're on that subject, I suggest that everyone read the Rolling Stone article "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" in the June issue. It is, in fact, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., so take it with a grain of salt, but the amount of research that went into the piece is staggering. Apparently, the level of election fraud in Ohio in 2004 made Florida in 2000 look like child's play. Read it if you want to spend the next hour swearing.
As for the California gubernatorial race, we've got Democratic challenger Phil Angelides running against the Republican incumbent "Governator" Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to the Sept. 7 Rasmussen poll of 500 likely California voters, Schwarzenegger's film career will have to be on hiatus a bit longer because he leads Angelides 47 percent to 39 percent.
Naturally, both sides have come out firing with negative campaign ads. Even though watching these ads might feel like torture, negative ads actually work.
Of course, some ads are notorious. Political science students know about the "Daisy" ad in 1964 - one of the most controversial commercials of all time, despite running just once. Democrat Lyndon Johnson used the powerful imagery of a nuclear blast as a backdrop to a little girl picking flowers to persuade voters to not elect "bomb-happy" Republican Barry Goldwater for president. It worked.
And who can forget the "Revolving Door" ad? An independent George H.W. Bush. advocacy group used that beauty in 1988 to show the nation how soft Democrat challenger Michael Dukakis was on crime. The centerpiece of the spot was a criminal by the name of William Horton, who, even though he was a convicted murderer, was allowed to leave a Massachusetts prison on a weekend furlough. Horton escaped to Maryland and subsequently assaulted a man, twice raped his fiancee and stole her car. Incidentally, Bush crushed Dukakis that year.
While I strongly doubt that the mudslinging of this gubernatorial election will be outlandish enough to withstand the test of time, I am still disappointed that the California Democratic Party chose to target Schwarzenegger with the tired and obvious low blow of being unfit for his job because he supported George W. Bush in 2004. Surely everyone's seen the ad by now because it runs all the time. It has footage of a Bush campaign rally in Ohio where our governor tells the crowd, "Let's go out and re-elect President George W. Bush," while the narrator notes that there are still 130,000 troops in Iraq, gasoline prices have risen 135 percent, and the national debt has increased $3 trillion dollars under Bush's watch. He then concludes with the classic rhetorical question, "Arnold Schwarzenegger's for George W. Bush. Is he for you?"
Let's not mince words here - this is a stupid, illogical attack ad.
Of course Schwarzenegger endorsed Bush. What did you expect him to do as a Republican governor? More than 62 million people voted for Bush in 2004. Does that make them unqualified and untrustworthy to do their jobs as well? Why criticize Schwarzenegger for mistakes that Bush made?
There's plenty of other things to criticize the governor on. According to Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, Schwarzenegger's latest budget will cut $199 million from various welfare programs.
"Under this budget, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer," Nuñez said to The Associated Press. "This budget plays lip service to the poor."
Democrats should criticize Schwarzenegger for policies he supports instead of Bush's failures. Schwarzenegger's treatment of police and firefighters is a good example. He actually wanted to eliminate their survivor benefits for widows and orphans.
Even if Angelides wanted to resort to personal attacks to depict Schwarzenegger as a disingenuous person, he should have pointed out that the Governator's anecdote about deciding to become a Republican after watching a Richard Nixon-Hubert Humphrey debate in 1968 was a complete fabrication because such a debate never happened.
California Democrats have to focus on the task at hand, and it's not Bush. They should make like their political action group and move on.
-Michael Erler is a political science senior.
-This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec. Send e-mail to letters@thedailyaztec.com. Anonymous letters will not be printed - include your full name, major and year in school.
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