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lesliepearOk, I am pro-Obama, but I just wanted to post some commentary on elections here.
In recent years it seems the campaign strategy of politicians has been to find negative things about the opponent and not stress their own positive things.
I think with Barack Obama they've had a hard time with this because he's relatively young and lived a fairly clean public and private life. First they found out that the pastor of the church he attended had very racist views. Just because his pastor has opinions and he attended the church doesn't mean he believes exactly the same thing on everything the pastor did. (As far as I know it wasn't a cult that brainwashed it's members). People chose houses of worship for many reasons not always based on the leader.
Now they are attacking him because he knew or served with Bill Ayres, a 60's radical terrorist on a committee on education (a common interest). Obama was 8 years old at the time of Mr. Ayres activies - he probably didn't even know what was going on then. If Obama was like myself, and found the 60's a fascinating time and wished he were older then - that still doesn't mean he'd approve of terroist tactics of the Weathermen. I think the 60's radicals are very different than Al Quida and other modern terriorists - their goals were different and I'm not sure their aim was to wantonly kill people in the name of their cause - they aimed to be more distruptive in general.
In recent years it seems the campaign strategy of politicians has been to find negative things about the opponent and not stress their own positive things.
I think with Barack Obama they've had a hard time with this because he's relatively young and lived a fairly clean public and private life. First they found out that the pastor of the church he attended had very racist views. Just because his pastor has opinions and he attended the church doesn't mean he believes exactly the same thing on everything the pastor did. (As far as I know it wasn't a cult that brainwashed it's members). People chose houses of worship for many reasons not always based on the leader.
Now they are attacking him because he knew or served with Bill Ayres, a 60's radical terrorist on a committee on education (a common interest). Obama was 8 years old at the time of Mr. Ayres activies - he probably didn't even know what was going on then. If Obama was like myself, and found the 60's a fascinating time and wished he were older then - that still doesn't mean he'd approve of terroist tactics of the Weathermen. I think the 60's radicals are very different than Al Quida and other modern terriorists - their goals were different and I'm not sure their aim was to wantonly kill people in the name of their cause - they aimed to be more distruptive in general.
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Date: 2008-10-15 03:05 pm (UTC)it's arguably sound to say that it might not be religiously motivated at all, rather politically motivated. but that doesn't help obama with the voters of faith - using a church to further your political career speaks badly about ones character.
and also that the ayers thing is a case of judgement. either he didn't know who was supporting him, what his past was, etc {which is unlikely, but not impossible} - which tells us that he didn't look into his people at ALL, or he knew who ayers was and what he did, but just didn't care. either way, to some of us it shows horrible judgment.