Campaigns & Values - US Presidential Elections

Many a times there are no-holds barred campaigns when parties assail each other – the virtues or strengths of the Candidates / Parties are not brought to the fore, instead electioneering becomes mud-slinging, virulent hate campaigns.  In Tamil Nadu, often those belonging to different political parties do not even exchange greetings in public and fight bitterly.

USA is more matured democracy or so, one thought !.   In US, the Presidential election is to be held on Nov 6, 2012.   The present incumbent Barack Obama is eligible for a second and final term and has announced that he will seek nomination to  be the  Democratic Party's candidate in this election.  Challenging him will be a Republican nominee.

The 2012 Republican presidential primaries are the selection processes in which voters of the Republican Party will choose their nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 presidential election. There are 2,286 delegates and a  candidate must accumulate 1,144 delegate votes to win. One of the candidates is  Jon Meade Huntsman, Jr., businessman, and diplomat who served as the 16th Governor of Utah. Huntsman worked as a White House staff assistant for Ronald Reagan,  was US Ambassador to Singapore  and then in  the People's Republic of China.   

Now he is in the thick and there is ruckus over an Advt mocking his adopted daughters !!!    It is a case of election fight weirdly twisted on harmless people back at home.   There reportedly was an obnoxious web video called “Jon Huntsman’s Values” mocking first Huntsman’s service as US ambassador to China, then the fact that he adopted a child in China and India. This provocative video reportedly has been hosted on YouTube by another contender’s group.  “Share our values? A man of faith?” the ad asks, as a photograph appears of Huntsman carrying an infant, Asha Bharati. A beaming father and daughter are seen with red tikkas on their foreheads. The picture was taken shortly after the Huntsmans adopted Asha, now 6, from Gujarat in 2006.

Huntsman and his wife have seven children, including Gracie Mei, 12, who was abandoned at a Chinese vegetable market at two months of age, and Asha, a poor infant adopted from Gujarat.   Huntsman furiously retorted that the videos have a sinister design and says that the two little girls are a daily reminder that there are a lot of kids in this world who don’t have the breaks that  others have and many such kids face a very uncertain future.  Huntsman runs a business empire and has big family.  He  has eight brothers and sisters, and he and his wife have seven children including the two adopted daughters – one Chinese and on eIndian.  He is a self-proclaimed fan of the progressive rock genre and played keyboards during high school in the band Wizard

Elections are smear campaigns and people stooping  to any level to ensure the defeat of their stronger opponents is perhaps Universal

Regards – S. Sampathkumar.