Scrub your speeches

Dear George:

While I intend to give you my vote, I implore you to insist that your people scrub your speeches, and the V.P.'s, to eliminate "out of context" quotes, or to insure that contextual clarity is offered along with the critique, concerning the oppositions' many questionable positions and assertions. Many of your critiques, couched, as they often are, in ironic, sarcastic, or ridiculing terms, are both true and deserved. But making the points by extreme carving or chopping of the target idiocy away from its context demeans and cheapens our cause. It also damages us by playing into the hands of the all-too-capable cheap shot artists on the other side. We don't need to give them additional ammunition. I believe we can play hardball without stooping to the embarrassingly coarse and dishonest rhetorical level so often employed by loonies and zealots. I suppose what I'm talking about comprises much of what the media likes to term "negative campaigning." Whatever. For me, I just want to see us as making an honest case.

Mike
Age 59
Alexandria, VA