Entering this political season I began with a hope that this year was going to be a different race on the political front and in many ways it is. For the first time we have a diverse candidate, if only in color, running for the presidency of the United States.
In the fight against conventional politics, Barack Obama faces an extreme uphill climb. Not only must he battle John McCain - a well respected figure on both party sides as well as around the globe - he also has to face the media. In fact, the media may be the harder opponent for both candidates because it has almost no accountability for its actions and coverage. McCain has complained recently of not enough media coverage while Obama toured the globe and met world leaders. So unless I am mistaken, McCain challenges Obama to go to Iraq and then complains when he takes all the news coverage with him? McCain should have just bitten his tongue.
On his trip across the Middle East and Europe, Obama took time to sit down and talk to reporters from each of the major news sources. All of the major interviews that he did focused on a few key points and the questions mostly surrounded Middle Eastern issues and justly so. However, to my disappointment, the questioners asked the exact same questions (is the writers' strike still on?) and none of these questions were topics that really highlighted the trip.
None really focused on anything of the major issues but instead focused on small nuances of the trip. The questioners - and Katie Couric in particular - continually pounded Obama on "the surge" and how it should be regarded as a good thing. The surge was in no way a positive move for American politics, Iraq or an end to the war.
The war still has no end in sight, we are still spending close to $1 billion a day in Iraq, we still have not caught Osama Bin Laden and Afghanistan is in a more delicate state. But you're right, we have lessened the number of troops dying daily in Iraq. Iraq is an extremely safe place; we are now only having 265 civilians killed, 102 car bombs and 22 assassination attempts every month, what a success.
Furthermore, those criticizing Obama for not supporting the surge and those who then look at the decreased violence as a measure to gauge success have an obvious lapse in logic. I don't think it was anyone's thought that adding over 20,000 more troops into combat would aid our troops and reduce violence. In speculation, we could draft every person under the age of 25 and ship them off to Iraq and I imagine it would lessen the amount of violence taking place, but it still doesn't make it a good policy.
All of the media coverage of politics has become something like trying to understand a foreign language. You get one news station's coverage and it's so far swayed one direction and there is another source that is completely opposite and in the end it's left to the listener to try to decipher what the facts are.
The media also has become obsessed with poll results. Polling has gotten ridiculous - it's not as though they are talking about poll results that may actually matter such as who is winning, but instead release the important poll results including "ambidextrous southern voters with a single parent background favor McCain's energy policy nearly 3 to 1." Maybe sometime the media will realize that polls do not matter at all. They are a useful tool for the candidates and the candidates only.
Another major story that has been making me angry is surrounding Obama and his name/color of his skin. Are there really that many ignorant white supremacists still alive who can produce a story about how someone won't vote for Obama because he is not "American" or because his name isn't John Smith or because he is not white? These people need to just be quiet before they breed ignorance into their children. These people bring down America as a whole and give us the reputation that we have around the rest of the world.
Apathy toward politics has never been something that I have fully understood until this political season. It is nearly impossible to decipher any real information amidst the hours and hours of falsified, biased and pointless reports the media feeds us. Is it too much to ask the media to be unbiased or at least admit their bias?