Today I attended a roundtable with Speaker of the House John Boehner, Senator Hatch, Candidate Mia Love, and several other key politicians.  It was a great discussion and I enjoyed being a part of it. 

As we draw closer and closer to the upcoming elections I am completely floored and frankly disgusted by the number or negative campaign ads being shown on television.  I typically enjoy letting the news play on TV while I am getting ready in the morning so I can keep up with current events, but I swear its gotten to the point that the last thing I want to do is turn on the television for fear that I will be yet another negative ad.  They play like every other ad lately.  The number of negative ads against Mia Love alone is mind blowing.  Here is this sweet, classy, professional woman running for office in little ole Utah and you would think she was running to be President of the United States for the amount of money that the Democratic Party is throwing into negative ads against her.  It is completely out of control.  It makes you wonder what they are so afraid of that they would spend that kind of money to try and keep her out of office…just the fact that they are so afraid of having her win alone makes me want to vote for her at this point…but frankly I would have voted for her anyway because she is fabulous and smart and exactly the kind of person we need representing our state.

As CEO of a company the one thing that turned me off the most was when someone trashed the competition in order to make a sale themselves.  I always felt that if your product was good that you didn’t need to do anything but show that product – if your product is good there is no need to trash the competitor because greatness shows all by itself without having to drag anyone else into it.  My feeling was that if someone felt the need to trash a competitor that they must be doing it to hide a flaw or shortcoming in themselves or their own products, and it was always a huge turnoff for me. 

I feel the same way about political figures. Why trash the other party?  Why spend so much money talking about anyone else?  Why not spend your time and energy just showing who you are and showing what you stand for?  Wouldn’t that be a much better use of campaign dollars?  Think how much more we would actually know about these candidates if they spent all that airtime telling us what they stand for and what they believe in and what they want to accomplish as our representatives rather than trashing each other!   Maybe then I wouldn’t feel like throwing up on the television every time a political ad came up.  Maybe then I would actually listen to hear more about what this person would do for me as my candidate. 

I have to say that I am really proud of the way that Mia is handling the negative ads with such grace and class.  That takes a lot because despite the fact she knows they are not true, they still have to hurt, especially when you have little children and loved ones watching.  But Mia handles it with her head held high and I really commend her for that.  She is definitely a class act and she has 100% won my support.

There are many life lessons from all of this.  Don’t trash-talk other people.  Don’t spend your time bagging on your competitor; rather spend your energy making yourself the best person you can possibly be.  Doing that will scream without sound that you are the better person…no words necessary. 🙂

I hope you all had a fabulous Halloween night and I hope you have a great Thursday!  SMILE!  And speak kindly of others today…it keeps you classy!

~Amy