Candidates pandering to voters
The stakes are high; the invective is flowing; the pandering is nauseating.
It’s the 2016 presidential campaign in full tilt.
Last month Donald Trump was so unconvincing as a Bible-thumper that he misstated a Bible verse.
He claims he loves “Two” Corinthians, not appropriately “Second” Corinthians.
Everybody knows foul-mouthed Donald isn’t exactly a candidate for the cloth anyway.
So that obvious slip only merited a day or two of cable news flabbergast.
That’s just what you do when you’re a candidate for the presidency.
Back in 1926, presidential candidate Herbert Hoover pandered his way to the presidency by promising there’d be a “chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”
Hoover won by a landslide – but only once.
That’s ’cause Hoover’s term was plagued by fewer chickens in fewer pots, fewer cars in fewer garages, and something now called the Great Depression.
That should have taught today’s presidential candidates – Democratic and Republican – to refrain from outrageous pandering.
They haven’t.
Last week, Bernie Sanders appeared in black face at a South Carolina rally in front of a dumbfounded, predominantly black audience.
Then he broke into a spirited rendition of Mammy.
Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be out done.
During one Town Hall meeting, when discussing the issue of abortion, she blurted out, “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies.”
Neither of those things really happened.
Exit polls in 2008 indicated that the black Democratic vote in South Carolina made up 55 percent of the primary election voters, so Bernie and Hillary figured they’d better get pandering.
They’ve each met with a number of black leaders and peppered every speech with a flagrantly transparent appeal to black voters.
Both candidates now appear at rallies with hands full of smiling black folks in tow – as though they’ve just discovered them.
Republicans are no less transparent in their overt, clumsy appeals for votes.
Jeb Bush recently tweeted a picture of a handgun with his name embedded into its barrel.
That tweet contained one word – “AMERICA”
Such a naked play for the votes of gun owners didn’t go unnoticed.
The New York Daily News made fun of that tweet by putting its contents on its front page, accompanied by the big headline “DOLT .45,” and the sub-headline, “Desperate Jeb Bush gets ripped for tweet suggesting guns are ‘America.”
Trump is forever using people, and places as political props.
Last September, Trump gave a foreign policy speech on a retired U.S. battleship in Los Angeles.
That made for a striking backdrop for The Donald’s promises to bolster the U.S. military’s arsenal, and to give increased support to the nation’s ailing military veterans.
Tickets were sold to the event, with the proceeds going to a group known as “Veterans for a Strong America.”
Trump claimed the organization represents “hundreds of thousands of veterans.”
But it was later revealed that the group only consists of one person – some guy from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
And further, the group’s nonprofit status had been revoked by the IRS, because it failed to file tax returns.
None of this probably matters to Trump, who’s built his campaign, in part, on the solution-free promise to fix all things military.
There’s nothing wrong with making campaign plays for votes.
There is something wrong with them when the motives are so blatantly obvious that the people at whom they’re directed – snicker, and even recoil in horror.
So far, a number of the Republican candidates, have been told not to use popular music as their onstage theme songs.
Adele and the Rolling Stones have balked at Trump for using their music at his campaign events.
Mike Huckabee, you remember him don’t you, was told by a member of Survivor, not to use “Eye of the Tiger” at his rallies.
If they were trying to appear to be hip for younger voters, they, instead, seemed silly.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ben Carson kissed a baby on a campaign stop last week, until somebody reminded him the kid isn’t old enough to vote!
I just made that up.
Sue me.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net