Romney, Obama must call a truce on nasty campaigning. Veteran political watcher Mark Halperin offered an idea this week that could help Americans feel better about their democracy: With the presidential campaign slipping fast into mudslinging personal attacks, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney should get together and call a truce. Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition “This is not the campaign I think either of these candidates wants,” he said on MSNBC.
Many political journalists say they’ve never seen a presidential campaign so nasty. If indeed a détente can somehow be arranged between the two candidates to run campaigns that are not out-of-bounds – banning ads with false claims or avoiding words like “hate” or “put y’all back in chains” – their campaigns, and hopefully their political-action committee supporters, might catch up with what is happening anyway among Americans. Only about 1.5 percent of that money may go for online ads. Slashing Democracy. Threaten to curb someone's right to own a gun in the state of Florida and you're likely to provoke a war — you'll be threatened, castigated, called un-American. You'll have to pry that gun from its Second Amendment-invoking owner's cold, dead hands, and you'll have to battle with legions of lobbyists and outraged citizens who'd rather shoot you than let you violate their constitutionally protected right to bear arms.
But threaten to take away someone's right to vote — a right that's at the very foundation of a democratic society — and what happens? Not much, judging from the recent attacks on voter's rights in Florida in which Governor Rick Scott and Secretary of State Ken Detzner have pushed to scrub voter rolls of alleged "non-citizens" who don't have the right to vote. By all accounts, their strategy is bizarrely flawed, has swept legally registered voters up in its net, and has been declared a violation of federal voting laws by the US Department of Justice. Yet it continues. 'Game Change': Review. There is a truly heartbreaking moment in "Game Change," the HBO film about Sarah Palin's run for vice president.
It comes after Palin (Julianne Moore) has made her galvanizing speech at the Republican National Convention accepting the nomination as John McCain's (Ed Harris) running mate and is drawing jaw-dropping crowds to her meet and greets. Footage is shown of the people waiting hours to meet her, including one rather large and nondescript woman who looks straight at the camera and says: "I have five kids. She's talking to me, and no one ever talks to me. " Never mind the lessons that current political candidates might learn from this moment; here it serves as a powerful and necessary reminder of what Palin represented in the early days following McCain's decision. 'Game Change': Five craziest scenes Those who come to "Game Change" Saturday looking for blame or explanation will be disappointed.
Well, just about everything. PHOTOS: Julianne Moore's career in pictures.