Letters to the Editor
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walkin' long the low road and what did i see?
The main difference between the end of the Pennsylvania campaign and the beginning was how nasty it got along the way. Clinton's final ad features images of Pearl Harbor, the stock market crash, the 1970s oil embargo, Osama bin Laden and Hurricane Katrina. A voiceover says, "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Who do you think has what it takes?"
Clinton aides declared in a conference call Monday that the commercial wasn't negative; it merely made the case that Hillary, not Obama, is most qualified to be president. Her campaign's phone calls to voters also accused Obama of lying about his position on gun rights.
Obama wasn't sticking to the high road, as he previously sought to do. "She is a hardworking public servant, but Senator Clinton does not understand the need to fundamentally change how Washington works," he said Monday night in McKeesport. "We can't have lobbyists and special interests setting the agenda in Washington." His campaign was running ads implying Clinton was using "fear and calculation to divide us" and making its own harsh phone calls to prospective supporters.
This writer describes Clinton's fearmongering political ad.
This writer reports that Clinton's camp lied to voters by telephone.
Then, this writer crafts a paragraph with the following topic sentence: "Obama wasn't sticking to the high road, as he previously sought to do."
And the facts that this interpretation of Obama was based on:
1) Obama claims Clinton doesn't understand the need to fundamentally change washington, that we can't have lobbyists and special interests setting the agenda in washington
Now, this is an attack on Clinton, and her worldview/philosophy, as a candidate, but reformers always run against the status quo, and I don't know that I'd call it the low road...
2) Obama accuses Clinton of using "fear and calculation to divide us" (presumably to her advantage).
This isn't really debatable, is it? Is Obama not to mention or decry these tactics?
3) his campaign was "making its own harsh phone calls to prospective supporters."
Were they harsh in the sense that callers lied to voters, or that they said unflattering things about Clinton in attempts to persuade them to vote for Obama?
And if they weren't lies but simply unflattering things, was their harshness due to the fact they unfair/sensational, or were they what neutral observers would agree were fair political arguments to make?
Given the naure of the first two, I'm not inclined to assume that "harsh" = low road here either.