Obama vs. Romney: The War of Lies

Maryland, where I reside, is not a swing state. This means that the opinion there is generally not equally divided. Maryland generally votes Democrat. The media market in Maryland (capital: Annapolis) isn’t as inundated by political advertisements as Virginia or Ohio.

I can, however, feel sorry for my neighbors in Virginia. Some of the television or radio stations that I listen to are also aimed at the people in Northern Virginia. This region, rich and dominated by a service economy, is the most likely to vote for Barack Obama. It’s why the Romney camp spends a lot of money on negative ad campaigns there, so that he can discredit the incumbent president. The last round went well for him. Result: I don’t dare listen to the television or radio anymore. Some of the ads are financed directly by the candidate’s campaign. Others are financed by independent groups who are, nonetheless, very partisan. The barrage of insults that results is unbearable.

I am, as a result, sickened by the enormous lies diffused by the two parties.

Example of a Democratic Lie

The Democrats do, for example, make the Republican candidate appear as the man who is going to forbid contraception. And yet, it’s absolutely false. I digress: the promise of free contraception and abortion are apparently issues that are going to make some women vote for Obama. It’s interesting that this subject is deemed the most important by some people, even more important than unemployment or the national debt.

A month of contraceptive pills costs $15. Is this an exorbitant sum for 30 days of sexual freedom? I use this word intentionally. Republicans think that the individual must be responsible for her actions and that the state or health insurance companies shouldn’t have to pay for the pill. Those who want to use this or that form of contraception are free to do it for a pathetic cost, according to Republicans. To be against free contraception doesn’t mean that one wants to forbid it.

I am probably naive and misinformed, but I have a hard time imagining that millions of female Democrats, or Republicans, are so irresponsible in their sexual lives and in the management of their budgets that they are going to regularly find themselves surprisingly short of $15. I also don’t like that a political party portrays women as sexual objects lacking brains and financial and emotional responsibility. To be elected in part by promising that individuals can be entirely devoid of all responsibility in sexual matters seems deplorable to me. Additionally, birth control also concerns the man. I close my digression. And I feel that I am now going to be massacred by outraged Internet users.

Example of a Republican Lie

In an ad that I tried to avoid four or five times a day, Mitt Romney accuses Barack Obama of wanting to automatically reduce hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending. It’s completely false.

The Republican candidate pretends that the White House chose to make $1 trillion in automatic cuts over 10 years in Pentagon spending. In fact, the two parties in principle accepted these cuts as a way to encourage them to find a more flexible compromise so as to reduce the increase of national debt by other means.

I find it dishonest to make Barack Obama out to be a president who would cut into the heart of military spending and intentionally disarm America. Military spending under Obama has slightly increased. Today, it passes $700 billion, or roughly 20 percent of the federal budget, as much as the retirement system, Social Security. Obama’s first secretary of defense, Robert Gates, was a Republican who held the same post under George W. Bush. At any rate, one must not jabber on about it.

The objective of this lie: convince Virginia voters, who often work in the armed sector, that Obama’s re-election would result in drastic cuts to military contracts. Mitt Romney estimates that between 100,000 to 200,000 jobs would disappear from Virginia, notably in naval construction, if Barack Obama were re-elected. His estimate comes from a dishonest simplification.

From one side, we can make the Republicans out to be crazy people who want to prohibit sex. From the other side, we can pretend that the Democrats are going to let the Chinese army dominate the world. It’s nonsense.

Poor residents of Ohio! The war of the ad campaigns is worse there. Each camp has understood that the candidate who wins Ohio will probably win the presidency. One could spend 80 days, 24 hours a day, listening to the 58,235 different ads that aired in this state in the last month. Democracy is not a winner in this war of lies. The only winners are the agencies that produce these ads and the television and radio stations that air them.