Political Irony

© David Horsey

This comic is referring to a recent ad from the Romney campaign, which uses an out-of-context quote from Obama saying “The private sector is doing fine.” and using it to claim that Obama is “out of touch”.

But not only was the quote taken out of context (Obama was pointing out that the private sector is doing better than the public sector, which the GOP is openly trying to drown) but even out of context it is essentially true. Corporate profits are at an all-time high and the stock market is doing as well as it was before the Great Recession.

But the bigger issue is that the flood of money in this year’s election is going to exacerbate the trend toward negative campaigning. As the cartoonist David Horsey put it in his commentary accompanying this comic:

We are at the stage in this campaign when both sides are fervently engaged in the task of creating a negative image of the opposing candidate. Whether that image is accurate or false is beside the point. This is how the game is played in 21st century U.S. politics. The odd twist this time is that each campaign has latched onto the same point of attack: “This guy is out of touch!”

The ads from both the Romney and Obama camps are good enough to make the bad image stick, but what if it sticks to both candidates? Do twin images cancel each other out or merely debase even further this shabby exercise in democracy through character assassination?