Viewpoints 2012: PAC ads jump right into attack mode and some words for Obama

First, I'd like to draw your attention to something that happens every election season.

At first, the candidates for any elective office vie for your votes through a number of campaign platforms. This incuded people putting stickers on their cars, which many leave on their cars after the elections are over, to people spending time offering leaflets (although that doesn't happen much anymore), to yard signs to, especially the past few elections, Internet ads and other such things. They still keep ads on the television and radio, which is a good thing.

And these ads run a typical pattern. Usually, the first few weeks have ads promoting the candidate of choice. This includes ads approved by the candidate to ads done by PACs, and, although the candidate ads usually begin with the good things about the candidate of choice, the PAC ads, since they're not, technically, for any specific candidate, can begin attack ads right away.

The attack ad is usually the last resort, the last statement where any candidate endorses an ad that blasts at the other candidate to try and undermine him or her and make their candidacy weaker.

So what does it say when a candidate begins with attack ads?

If a candidate had any true achievements, any real successes and triumphs that they could lean on, then they could campaign free to say whatever they want.

But what if their opponent had none of these, just a lot of words that were easily ignored?

When comparing the two, something begins to emerge. If someone were desperate enough to hold onto their position, wouldn't they want to make the other person appear as dark and evil as possible? If, in the looking at the two candidates, one could clearly see the superiority over the incumbent candidate, wouldn't desperate attempts, such as vicious attack ads, be the expected result?

Does that sound familiar?

But now for the other part of this report, and this one I'd like to direct to one person.

Last Friday, President Obama basically told small business owners that they didn't build their businesses, that it was some government agency that was responsible. This is what I'd like to write to him.

Mr. Obama,

Some time around the time I was born, in 1974, my dad started up a business with the lathe and the drill press in our basement. There, they created wooden knitting looms, looms they then sold.

It wasn't a decade later when the shop was moved upstairs, more machines were added and more items were being made. There were many who came to my dad with difficult projects that he thought over and considered and then figured it out.

Before the shop closed, he gained a reputation for being a problem solver and an all-around nice guy that any could go to and see what happened. He even solved problems around the house and had things constructed that couldn't have been before.

And here's the real rub. Except for the time he went to get a permit to run his business, sending in whatever taxes need be, and the one time a government person told him he had to have LLC to the end of his name, NO GOVERNMENT AGENCY OR AGENT WAS INVOLVED.

Mr. Obama, the statement you make that people like my father owed their entire business to the government is, to date, the single biggest offensive thing you have ever said.

(Adendum: Some may think that it's not exactly fair to say Mr. Obama was claiming the government was responsible for building my dad's machine shop. Indeed, it is the case that all the machines he used were not created by him, he bought them from a dealership and a manufacturer he could trust, and it's also the case that he did learn his trade from a teacher, but the impact of these parts was negligable. You could not build the reputation my dad had, nor could you say that another should be credited with his creativity and his knowledge and imagination. Also you could not hear the groanings of the knowledge that his shop was closing business before he died. But, if you're insistent on the idea that others, not individuals, were responsible for their actions, then wouldn't it make sense to jail not only the perpetrator of a crime where a person is murdered, but also the gun manufacturer and the one that made the ammo? Wouldn't a domestic terrorist be entitled to have the fertilizer manufacturer stand next to him for blowing up a building? Still, I do see one point. Obama doesn't want to take credit for his birth certificate creation, he just wants it to be believable.)

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