Political campaigning short on policy, long on attacks

With September and October to go, some voters are surprised that poll results show Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked in a dead-heat in the presidential election. So much could change in the almost 75 days before the vote.
There hasn’t yet been a debate between the two finalists, a verbal contest that could spell disaster for one of them, as it did for President Joe Biden. It’s likely one will emerge as a true front runner. However, even that could change.
We also do not yet know the results of Trump being found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the hush-money trial in New York criminal court. Trump is the first former president in U.S. history to be convicted of a felony.
Just imagine what the reaction will be if Trump is sentenced to jail, which I seriously doubt will happen, but anything’s possible.
The period of sought-after American unity that surfaced right after the thankfully failed assassination attempt on Trump lasted for about a week, and the political acridity has ensued at a rate much quicker than we’d previously seen.
Much of it can be traced right to Trump, who has thrown caution aside and continued his verbal assaults on Harris — at levels unseen before — despite calls from his own campaign managers and national political pundits who’ve said he can’t win the election if he stays on that venomous track.
A phenomenon surfacing recently has been the attempt by Trump’s backers to demand that voters pay attention only to “policy issues” and forget those of “personality” involving the candidates.
One of the main problems with that is that Trump himself refuses to stick to “policy” and instead remains focused on devaluing Harris on subjects ranging from her ethnicity to her intelligence and her looks.
In fact, over a recent weekend he upped his virulent blitz against Harris by claiming he was “better looking” than she, as if it somehow mattered in appealing to voters. His handlers must’ve headed to the bar at that point.
That was a minor matter, however, compared to his stated belief that a medal he gave a wealthy private campaign donor was more important and meaningful than those awarded to U.S. military Medal of Honor recipients for valor on the battlefield.
Of his act of awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom while he was in office, Trump told an audience at his New Jersey golf club that the citizens’ award “is the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor — that’s soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”
That was the latest of his attacks on American war heroes, which started in his successful run for the presidency in 2016 when he depreciated the military record of heavily Mississippi-connected John McCain, a Naval aviator who was shot down over Vietnam and was a prisoner of war for seven years, later a member of the U.S. Senate and Republican nominee for president in 2008.
Just days after entering the 2016 race, Trump said, “(McCain’s) not a war hero … I like people who weren’t captured, OK? I hate to tell you,” flawed logic to most Americans.  
Are these the types of “policy issues” his supporters want voters to remain focused on? I find it hard to believe because the Trump ambush on Harris and heroes like McCain were and are such an affront to this nation’s values of decency and character.
— Mac Gordon, a McComb native, is a retired newspaperman. He can be reached at [email protected].