Campaign rubbernecking

My latest column, title above,  appeared in The Virginian-Pilot today.

One of the things referenced in the piece is the 1890 Harvard Law Review article by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, which you can read here. The concept of a right to privacy is one many of us take for granted – except when it comes to candidates, in which case it seems everything is fair game. I’m more than tired of the personal attacks that politics has devolved into. And I have to admit that in both cases that I cited – Krystal Ball and Rich Iott – I don’t get the reasons for the attack. Each candidate only has an outside chance of winning, so why drag them through the mud?

An email I received this morning said we ought to have limits – maybe things done in college and before shouldn’t count, or delinquencies of less than some dollar amount – the writer suggested $10,000. I don’t know that we need limits; rather, we need to exercise some common sense and some common decency. I go back to the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

All the emphasis on personal attacks takes the focus away from the issues. At the end of the day, it is the stances on the issues that matter.

Of course, when competing candidates have no separation between them on the issues – which seems to be the case far too often these days – it makes an issue-based decision difficult. Maybe if campaigns didn’t get so dirty, we’d actually have candidates who hold views that are more diverse.