Haitian tragedy no place for politics

On Jan. 12 a horrendous tragedy fell upon the small nation of Haiti – an earthquake reported to have affected over 3 million people and killed thousands. The response to this crisis was unprecedented. People from every corner of the globe flew in to give aid in any way they could. Numerous world leaders mobilized vast humanitarian efforts including two former U.S. presidents. Everyone just wanted to get these people the help they needed. No one would think any type of partisan politics could be injected into this type of tragedy, right? Well, unfortunately, this type of wishful thinking did not prove to be the case.

Within a few days of the crisis, people like Keith Olbermann and Rush Limbaugh were using the situation to instill their partisan agendas across the airwaves. Limbaugh said on his show that President Barack Obama will use this tragedy to “burnish his credibility with the black community.” Olbermann shamefully used the earthquake to promote health care reform.

There’s a time and place for politics but it seems like in this day and age, anything goes. Whoever says the most outrageous and insidious thing gets the attention while people who are trying to make real progress in this country are pushed to the back burner.

We are in a time of “gotcha” moments, replayed sound bites, and both sides of the political spectrum being fast and loose with the truth. Everyone wants to score that next political point in order to raise their profile with the American public.

Another example of this is a recent radio advertisement for Sen. John McCain’s re-election campaign. It was quoted as saying “President Obama is leading an extreme left-wing crusade to bankrupt America”.

Yes, we’ve spent a very large amount of money in a very short time but deep down does McCain, R-Ariz., really think that the president’s sole agenda is to lead a crusade to bankrupt his own country? Some mid-level staffer probably wrote it because they knew it would rile people up and McCain just went with it.

Sure, there will always be dirty partisan politics, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere. In a time when this country is battling double-digit unemployment, two wars overseas and plenty of other challenges, many would think that both parties could at least have some type of constructive dialogue. But it seems like each side is just increasingly playing the blame game, pointing fingers with no alternatives, spraying each other with partisan venom that poisons all of us in the middle who just want positive results.

Posted by Ian Bridgeforth on Jan 22 2010. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry