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What We’ve Been Waiting For: Sestak-Specter Commercial Wars

By Randy LoBasso

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Apr. 21, 2010

Usually during campaign season, it’s the desperate loser behind in polling that airs the rub-it-in-your-face smear commercials a la John McCain’s 2008 week-by-week fight for out-of-reach bendy-straws.

Now that Sestak and Specter have begun with their inevitable misleading advertisements to air during Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, it’s the incumbent with a healthy lead who’s tossing feces at the competition. We wonder if this has anything to do with the latest Rasmussen poll we detailed on Monday, or if Specter is just a dick.

Note: Sestak isn’t running for re-election to the House). It’s nice, sort of introduces the candidate with his military service and his time in Clinton’s White House, as well as his rationalization for health-care reform (his daughter had a brain tumor and received government health care due to his military benefits. She’s OK now.)

Specter’s gone the other route. He’s found unkempt pictures of the admiral, turned them black and white, and actually attacked Sestak’s military record (which is pretty ballsy) in saying Joe’s foolhardiness began in the Navy when he was relieved for “poor command climate” and continued in Congress where he received the Razzie for “worst attendance of any Pennsylvania congressman."

So, let’s put some of this in perspective real quick. Turns out, according to the New York Times’ Caucus blog, “Toward the end of his Navy career, while serving as a top aide to Admiral Vernon E. Clark, the chief of naval operations, Mr. Sestak was assigned to assess the Navy’s fleet, and he proposed steep cutbacks. When Admiral Clark retired in 2005, his successor, Admiral Mike Mullen, relieved Mr. Sestak of that duty.”

It’s true though, that the Navy Times reported on July 25, 2005, that Sestak was relieved of his duties because of “poor command climate” though the source giving this reason remained anonymous in the article.

As for his missing of votes, Sestak cites his ill father (who died in 2009) and his decision to tour Pennsylvania and campaign instead of staying in Washington to, you know, work. Therefore, we conclude, Specter's commercial is half-right.

Here’s the best part about campaign season: It’s correctly assumed that every single commercial you see is a vicious lie. These ads and the candidates who endorse them, therefore, underestimate the power of your assumption – and the convenience of the Internet. And since each commercial is only 30 seconds to a minute long, it’s easy to Google some shit and find out what, exactly, the lie is, why it was stated and how it’s legally allowed to be in a commercial, making the Google sleuth that much smarter and wonky. And, when you’re done, you can check out some LOL Cats or Fail Blog! Everyone wins.