What we want to hear

Many of us had high hopes for this campaign season.
We looked forward to productive debates, discussions and even advertisements about what matters to Americans.
But with the increasingly nasty attack ads from the candidates seeking this nation’s highest office, some of those hopes are fading fast.
There are certainly plenty of issues that candidates John McCain and Barack Obama could and should be expressing their views about. The list is lengthy, and includes, just to name a few, health care reform, troop involvement in overseas conflicts, and energy production.
The recent financial meltdown and faltering economy gives these candidates even more opportunity to tell us why we should vote for them.
Instead, these candidates seem to be focusing on why we should not vote for the other candidate. And now it’s come down to who these candidates knew before they became presidential candidates.
The most recent attacks connect Obama to Bill Ayers, who in the 1970s was involved in a anti-Vietnam War group that bombed government buildings, and in return, McCain to the 1980s Keating Five savings and loan scandal.
OK. So we all have baggage in our past. Some of that past deserves scrutiny by the public. But some of the criticism launched by candidates at one another is an effort to discredit while directing attention away from themselves.
Clearly, the public is tired of these kind of smear campaigns. With each punch and counter punch, the real issues these candidates should be concerned about becomes more clouded.
Again, don’t tell us why not to vote for the other guy. With less than one month left before the Nov. 4 general election, voters want to hear: why each of the candidates believe they are the best for the job; how they will make the lives of average Americans better; and how they will help to get our struggling economy back on its feet.