McCain 'Sexes-Up' His Campaign

The McCain campaign is really getting down and dirty. Dona C. Kim '01 of the Harvard Current happened upon an advertisement for Ariz. Senator John S. McCain on an Asian pornographic website. In an e-mail message, Kim said she was "surfing for a story that was at once sexy and serious."

The Current recently released the story to several national news services, including the Drudge Report and abcnews.com who both published the news online. If McCain has been advertising on pornographic web sites, what are Republican values coming to?

In a campaign where all of the candidates' skeletons have been marching out of their respective closets, McCain must be feeling left out. How can he compete with Bush's alleged cocaine habit or Al Gore's marijuana stint? He needs pizzazz for the polls. He needs sex.

Let's face it: Sex sells. Abercrombie & Fitch knows it, Larry Flynt depends on it and even our esteemed President has dabbled in it. So why should McCain miss out on all the fun?

After all, McCain prides himself on his appeal to younger voters, so what better way to connect with Generation Y than through Internet pornography, that upstart competitor to the old-school Playboy institution? In fact, Internet porn could be seen as a metaphor for the McCain campaign; rebellious, accessible to the masses and dominated by anti-establishment personalities.

All joking aside, the American public has suffered a deluge of sex, scandal, gossip and embarrassment in the past year, and frankly it's getting a little old. Do we really think that McCain intentionally put an advertisement on a pornographic website? And, even if he did, should it matter? The presidential election should be based on issues, not the blips in character that make good sound bites or headlines.

Time and time again, it has been argued that Americans need a President with character. But shouldn't Americans elect someone who will address issues of importance, keep the economy blossoming and work hard on foreign policy issues?

It is not to say that character should not play any part of a decision to elect someone as President, but the types of faults that have been paraded as serious character flaws simply are not. Some drug use in college does not mean that a candidate is unfit to be President. An accidental advertisement on an porn website should not be grounds to question a candidate's moral makeup.

This incident should give the candidates the opportunity to admit their fallibility, and instead of vilifying one another, they should actually debate the issues at hand. What could be sexier than that?