ALSO VISIT

 

The Republican party has opted for a full-scale assault on the character of their Democratic challenger. It is a hallmark of Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, to relentlessly attack the greatest strengths of an opponent, in order to sow doubt and create the appearance of weakness or incompetence. This week saw the resuscitation of numerous false claims by Bush campaign operatives, culminating in the wild array of flagrantly false attacks by Zell Miller in the convention's keynote address on Wednesday.

The RNC stood out for the severe and overwhelming move to moderate the party's public message, leaving some of the most influential party officials, like Rep. Tom DeLay, on the sidelines, and featuring socially softer voices like McCain and Schwarzenneger. But the attacks stood out and will perhaps resonate the most, with John McLaughlin calling the convention "Kafkaesque, because it was built on so much paradox, absurdity and falsification."

The Rove method is clearly a kind of all-attack all-the-time strategy deployed across all media and with notorious (and sometimes proud) disregard for fact. The struggle so far has been for the President to keep himself above the fray and plausibly deny any association with the most vicious of the attacks on his opponent's credibility. But on Thursday, the candidate adopted many of the mantras of his surrogates' attack campaign, and openly called into question his opponent's fitness to serve.

Having not permitted himself the presumed indulgence of criticizing the now debunked Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads, even after two apparent links to his own campaign, the President is now taking the chance that he opens himself up to the attacks against the attackers. The media (ABC News in particular) have begun to seek out the evidence that is supposed to support many of the most ruthless accusations, and the attackers are losing ground on the credibility question. Some now observe that the relentless attack campaign has significantly undermined the quality of debate and brought the national political picture to a perilously shallow level of thinking.

The campaign appears now to be committed to be one of the most relentlessly negative on record, with some analysts noting echoes of the 18th century's paid journalism and general newsprint savagery. The threatening of a TV reporter by Zell Miller, who challenged Chris Matthews to a duel when asked to confront the facts he had misrepresented seems incomprehensible now, but quotes in newspapers are what is said to have led to Vice President Aaron Burr killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel in New Jersey, across the river from where Miller lost control. Now, Kerry is said to be "shaking up" his staff and preparing for a grueling counterassault on the incumbent.

The question is how much credibility any political machinery really has in this particular election, after the revelations of the last year regarding not only official intelligence, but the reliability of the mainstream media in reporting fact. The voter will have to ask whether negativity of this sort could really represent a confident candidate with a legitimate program, or whether such political charades demonstrate a psychology at odds with the "safer, stronger" military image being put forth. [For more: Guardian]