Hillary Clinton was my idol throughout grade school. I read her autobiography, Living History, cover-to-cover when I was 14. I was disappointed by her primary loss to Barack Obama in 2008. The presence of an intelligent, hard-working female politician as a role model fueled my interest in politics from a young age, as I’m sure it has for many other American women.
To say that the revelations of the Benghazi trials have made me uncomfortable is a bit of an understatement. Seeing Clinton portrayed as a political conspirator, an accusation grounded in factual evidence, challenges my loyalty to her as a politician. On a deeper level, it means recognizing that someone I have long admired and hoped would be our president one day is subject to the same foibles as any other individual entrenched in a political system rife with corruption.
In the midst of the onslaught of doubt I’ve experienced about Clinton, Karl Rove has released an ad attacking her role in Benghazi that is funded by his Super PAC. It takes key quotes out of context and paints her as a villain, and it is a harbinger of what will undoubtedly will be a contentious 2016 election.
Ads like these are designed to be persuasive and manipulative. They often succeed in this regard. But just because they can be effective doesn’t mean they have to be. There is a way around this – examining facts rather than making snap emotional judgements based on factors, including partisan bias, that are bound to cloud our judgments.
Reading about Benghazi has forced me to extricate my preconceptions from the situation and to instead focus on what matters: informing myself with factual evidence about the government’s knowledge that terrorism was at the root of the Benghazi attacks. Emails released on May 15 confirm that there was material taken out from the Benghazi talking points to mislead Americans about what occurred in Benghazi. But this is just my take on it, and it is important for people to examine the material and articles themselves to avoid falling into the familiar pitfalls of partisan bias. In the past, I’ve been biased about Clinton in the same way many people are unable to be objective about myriad political issues split along partisan lines, ranging from abortion to tax policy.
The easy way out, and we all take it sometimes, is to allow partially or wholly unsubstantiated notions of people and/or issues to dictate the way we think, and in turn, the way we vote. This negligence is why emotionally exploitative attack ads such as the one Rove released are so influential in elections. While it is impossible to eliminate the sometimes regrettable effects that “big money” such as Rove’s has on political campaigns, we have measures at our disposal to mitigate its efficacy.
Emotions, empty campaign promises, semi-fictionalized attack ads–these elements exemplify the seductive, story-like nature of politics. They're certainly compelling, there's no doubt about that. They always will be. Like the celebrity gossip that lines the pages of US Weekly, it's tempting to regard political battles over important issues like ingestible tabloid fodder, rather than giving them the critical attention they deserve. Though it’s temporarily satisfying to eat up pieces of politically motivated propaganda, it leads to damaging side effects. These side effects manifest themselves in voters who are influenced by ad-hominem attacks and vitriol rather than venerable arguments and logically sound reasoning.
It is incumbent on individuals to stop validating this method of political practice, a process that begins by questioning the value of our right to vote when we often choose to inform our views vis a vis emotional bias and political propaganda. It’s time to stop blaming attack ads, to stop relying on partisan misinformation, to stop allowing politics to be about personal attachments to key political figures who seem “cool” or “interesting.” It’s not personal, it’s political, and Americans need to start thinking and voting that way.