Fear tactics abound in GOP

The last three ads I've seen for Barack Obama have had the presidential candidate touting his health care plan, his tax cuts for the middle class, and his desire for education reform direclty to the American public, speaking about his past, he experience, and his plans for the future. Conversely, the last few McCain ads I've seen have had voiceovers that rival the those used in slasher movie previews, asking questions like: "What will happen if the economy gets worse?" or "Who do you want in chrage if terrorists strike again?" and "Is Barack Obama really prepared to battle al-Quaida?" One even shows a choppy ocean getting increasingly worse as a storm approaches, and the dire-sounding woman says something like, "Barack Obama says the economy will get better, but what if it doesn't? Who do you want at the helm if things get worse?" All that's missing is the music from Jaws.

Everything coming out the GOP camp could have been scripted by the grim reaper -- or better yet, by George W. Bush's campaign managers from 2004. For a candidate who's trying to seperate himself from the current president, John McCain sure is using a lot of Bush's tactics in these final days before Nov. 4. While Obama is promising hope, change, optimism, and improved living conditions, the McCain camp is drawing a worse-case scenario that is seemingly trying to recreate the fear that was considered a pivotal element in Bush's victory in 2004. But the problem is, it's 2008, and the biggest threats we face today are from financial monsters on Wall Street that were created and fed by Republican policies. People are afraid of the imminent threats of losing their homes or their jobs or their retirement funds. They're angry about canceling that summer vacation because the price of gas would have eaten up half the budget, and they're frustrated that they can't afford improvements on the home they have to keep living in because they have no hope of selling it.

According to MSN, home prices fell for the the 25th straignt month while foreclosures were up 17 percent over last year. Locally, in the last month, more than 200 steelworkers at Wheatland Tube in western Pennsylvania were laid off, which is only one case of dozens like it. These are people's fears come true, and Obama is offering solutions and reassurance while McCain is giving voters little more than prophesies of unnamed, unseen, unknown disasters. Ominous and unfounded what-ifs abound in McCain's rhetoric as he tries to play on the same sense of insecrity and vulnerablity that convinced Americans (and soccer moms specifically) to stay with an inept, unpopular president four years ago.

But fear is now an old tactic, and voters aren't falling for it anymore. We're sick of being scared, and we want someone to tell us things are going to get better, not frighten us with dire speculations that things will get worse. Comparing the approaches taken by the two candidates, it becomes very clear that McCain knows his policies aren't popular among the majority of Americans, and his only hope is repeating the strageties that barely worked four years ago. Too bad for him that we learned from that mistake and won't be repeating it this time around. We're voting for change, not fear!