McCain's sleazy ads crowd out real issues

How can John McCain say he approves those ads?! What is he trying to accomplish? The ads seem designed to deceive and divide people. Here's some analysis from Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly blog, Political Animal.

There is a clear strategy emerging (from the McCain camp) for the campaign's homestretch. The more the McCain campaign comes up with new disgusting attacks and blatant lies, the more the Obama campaign has to respond. To leave attacks unanswered, or obvious distortions unacknowledged, would be a mistake. At the same time, the more time the Obama campaign has to respond to McCain's sleaze, the less time Obama has for his own message.

In other words, if Obama responds to McCain's sleaze, McCain benefits. If Obama ignores it, McCain benefits.

Remember, McCain's own campaign manager (said) last week, "This election is not about the issues." And the only way to ensure it's not about the issues is to run nauseating ads...

As Involved Voters, I think it's time we said "enough is enough," turned off these ads and started asking how the candidates will address the issues we care about.

For example, today I had the good fortune to attend a gathering of about 50 people at which Susan Rice, an expert on foreign policy and adviser to Barack Obama spoke. She laid out clearly the differences between McCain's "worse than Bush" approach to dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, China, etc and Obama's 21st century approach based on knowledge of the complex world we live in. Good solid information on the issues is out there; but we sure won't be getting it from "info-tainment" TV or McCain's campaign ads.