Then just two days later, on Sunday morning, I watched an Obama campaign ad mocking Mitt Romney as he sang a rendition of “America the Beautiful,” with sarcastic subtitles about Romney’s support at Bain for outsourcing of jobs. That charge was called by “Fact Checker” Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post “misleading and unfair”; and then, immediately following, a Romney ad accusing Obama also of outsourcing jobs using federal subsidies to his campaign donors — an ad that the same Kessler gave a rating of “Four Pinocchios” — meaning the ad was filled with lies.
How disappointing.
Whoever reads this column today — whatever your politics — whoever you are supporting for president — please join me in telling President Obama and Mitt Romney — on Twitter, on Facebook, on their presidential campaign websites:
Please give us more of what you gave us last Friday morning after the horrible tragedy in Aurora.
Debate the issues and help inform us of the real choices we face. Reassure us that there can be decency in politics in America once again.
And most of all: Tell your campaign managers in Chicago and Boston to pull the plug on the negative attack ads.
Please — just tell them in one word:
Enough.
Lanny Davis, the principal in the Washington law firm of Lanny J. Davis & Associates, which also specializes in legal crisis management, served as President Clinton’s special counsel from 1996-98 and as a member of President George W. Bush’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (2006-07). He currently serves as Special Counsel to Dilworth Paxson and is a partner with Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele in Purple Nation Solutions, a public affairs-strategic communications company. He is the author of the forthcoming book, “Crisis Tales – Five Rules for Handling Scandal in Business, Politics and Life,” to be published by Simon & Schuster. He can be followed on Twitter at @LannyDavis
