vincentclark dot com

As we head into November the question of who will lead us for the next four years becomes more and more of a reality. Unfortunately too often we pay little attention to the people running the campaign and who is advising the president and far too much attention is focus on silly things like what someones pastor says or a slip up here and there.

In 2000 we spent to much time make fun of Al Gore for “inventing the Internet” and too little time looking at Carl Rove or Scooter Libby.

We know all too well the payoffs of running a successful campaign. This is why I don’t really mind that John McCain doesn’t use the Internet. What concerns me more is how little his advisers know of the Internet in comparison to Barack Obama.

When looking at CNN’s Politics site I noticed the main story was about Obama’s pick for the VP. To the right of the page I saw a paid advertisement wonderfully integrated into the page supporting Obama. The way the page and the ad fit together, if one did not know that it was an advertisement they would think that CNN was supporting Obama.

In a time where online advertising has fundamentally changed the rules something simple like a well placed ad matching keywords shows a higher level of understanding of the world that we live in. If this is good or bad had yet to be seen, however, Obama’s camp can speak with more authority on Internet based regulations that McCain.

For example, are these ads violating any election laws? Is this an ethical practice?

I am guessing unless someone from McCain’s camp is reading this post it will not be discussed. This alone raises questions about those in Obama’s camp.

Why should Obama’s team point this advertising flaw out?

Is it ethical of Obama’s camp to exploit this yet to be realized issue and not bring it to the public?

Should this be the soul criteria for picking a president? Of course not, it is only a window to the people behind the man running for the most important office in our country. If we paid more attention to Mr. Rove’s cold calling asking people if they would support McCain if they knew that he had an illegitimate black child, or placing up signs in prominently black neighborhoods telling the people before they vote to clear up any warrants, parking tickets, or other things of that nature, then perhaps we wouldn’t be as surprised at the disgraceful actions of the Bush administration. Perhaps if we knew Rove, Libby, and others within the Bush campaign we would not be in the mess we are in now. The actions of the 2000 and 2004 for campaigns by the Bush camp speaks volumes about what we could expect from his administration in the future.