Is this the dirtiest election ever?

The answer to that question is, of course No.   I really find the ahistorical shortsightedness of so much of the media coverage of US elections quite depressing.  I would personally wager that every single election campaign since at least 1964 (remember how Goldwater was going to send us all up in a mushroom cloud?) has been reported by some media outlet or other as "the dirtiest campaign ever".

I particularly enjoy the way the Brirtish press - see this -  report,  without qualification, that the nasty campaigning is all the work of the evil Republicans.

I've just got back from a week in the Mid West.  In between watching the World Series I got a firsthand look at the Missouri Senate race for what may be the pivotal seat in next week's elections. While the media has predictably fixated on Rush Limbaugh's rather wince-making comments about the Michael J Fox commercial, it should be said that the ad is really a quite despicable piece of work.

In just 30 short seconds it manages to distort completely the entire issue of stem cell research, gloss over the science underlying the debate, make outrageously simplistic charges against the Republican candidate and imply, quite shamelessly, that a vote against the Democrats is a vote to condemn people like Fox to misery and death. Oh, and by the way, we're not supposed to criticise it because the man is evidently suffering.

If you choose to insert yourself into politics in this grotesque way, you really have to take the consequences.

My sense, from having spent a short time in some of the more conservative parts of the state, is that this ad may be helping galvanise some voters who are troubled by Amendment 2 and what it means for respect for human life to put aside their doubts and come out and vote Republican. It would be gloriously fitting if the Dems failed to take the Senate because of it.

Comments

[Marcia Halvorsen]

I'm not sure Mr. Baker's Blog has earned the right to be called a "blog" since he so rarely posts readers' responses. Still, I'll have a go. I remember when Mr. Baker wrote for the Financial Times...in the company of Martin Wolf, Quentin Peel, among others, Mr. Baker's columns were intelligent, reasoned, and logical, whatever one thought of his opinions. Since joining The Times, he has become shriller, ruthlessly partisan, and prone to use snappy, cutsey phrasing. It is a regrettable come down for a journalist and I, for one, think it is time for Mr. Baker to come home. The influence of US right wing journalism on Mr. Baker's thinking and writing is all too apparent.

[Ted]

Bravo, I applaud you, and the Times in general, for being the only British Newspaper telling the truth about what is going on in America. Keep telling the truth to a public that neither understands, or is brainwashed or both what is going on in American elections.

[Jim Walton]

And this makes the Fox ad different from the others of both parties how?