Columns

Obama keeps to low road

BY LEN TRIA, Uncommon Sense
Published: October 28, 2012

As the presidential campaign is entering its final stages the candidates have very different messages for the American people.

The president has resorted to name calling and demagoguery, which, in the view of many campaign watchers, is an indication that President Obama is losing the race. It is a common tactic in heated discussions that the loser of the argument resorts to name calling and not factual retorts.

Therefore, he has responded like the typical Chicago thug and is trying character assassination as his campaign theme. However, the American public is a lot smarter than the president gives them credit for.

The American public wants to know how a candidate will attack the problems of chronic high unemployment (23 million), more people in poverty, 47 million people receiving food stamps: These are the paramount issues that the president will not answer.

Instead, he calls Gov. Romney a liar, not smart, out of touch, but the reality is when records are compared Romney wins in a landslide. The president has not held a press conference in seven months in order to not have to answer for his failed economic policies.

Yet this was to be, by his words, the most transparent administration in history. What we have gotten is the most intellectually corrupt and amateurish government in our lifetime.

Platitudes and nebulous policy pronouncements were okay in 2008, but in 2012 the issues are clearly defined, and rude, crude, and demeaning attacks on your opponent are not winning policies.

The president in the last debate was indeed a belligerent and recalcitrant individual who spoke condescendingly to his opponent. Even the talking heads made disparaging remarks about his bayonets and horses and aircraft carriers.

Too bad he didn't know the Marines still use bayonets and in Afghanistan some of our troops did, in fact, have to use horses. I won't get into the Benghazi debacle where four Americans were murdered and our president didn't lift one finger during the seven hours of the attack to aid the beleaguered Americans.

Now the emails are coming out about what the administration knew and when they knew, in spite of their denials that it was not a terrorist planned and orchestrated attack. Mitt Romney has taken the high ground and the more presidential approach to his campaign and has not resorted to the low-life attacks of the Democrats.

In the end, the American people will decide whether or not they want a proven successful leader or a failed community organizer who demonstrated his ineptness over the last four years.

Len Tria, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, lives in Spring Hill and is a former Hernando County commissioner.