I'm in Florida now and I can confirm that they're right about the airwaves being flooded with ads. The ones McCain approves are negative, the ones sponsored by various Republican groups are frightening; Obamas are about 50 / 50 positive / negative and I haven't seen any from Democratic side groups regarding the big race.
The hardest ones to stomach are the fear mongering ads from the Republican side groups - especially the ones aimed at Florida's seniors.
I can appreciate your parents trepidation.
-Joe
I'm in California, which is painted dark blue on the map, so we don't get a lot of campaign ads.
I don't miss them.
The best advice to anyone in a swing state is to TIVO the TV, then skip the ads. None of them add a thing to any kind of reasonable dialogue, nor do they give one reason to vote for one candidate over another. I've seen hundreds of campaign ads over the years, and they all have the same thing in common: They are full of crap, all of them from both parties.
The best thing to do is to look at the issues, then decide which candidate agrees with your position more than the other, then ask yourself if there is more than a snowball's chance that your pick might begin to sort of straighten out the mess left by the past administration, or if they're likely to make things worse.
Make yourself a balance, put the plusses and minuses of each candidate on a chart, then base your vote on the result.
Then, don't expect the candidate to actually keep all of the promises made during the campaign. Neither one of them will be able to do that. One big minus for both of them is that they tell the voters what they want to hear.
Of course, if they didn't tell us what we want to hear, we wouldn't vote for them.
And, remember, we're not electing a king. The president can't make laws, can't do really any of the things that they say they want to do without the active participation of Congress.
Thank God for the Constitution.
