Candidates should address issues and boot sleaze
Pub Date: 7/1/2006
By Mark Staples
Government Affairs Counsel
Montana Tavern Assoc.
The primaries are over, and the election battle is now on in full, which is both exciting and agonizing to Montana citizens.
Exciting because contests that could determine the direction of public policy are inherently adrenaline inducing. Agonizing because every election cycle we seem to fall further from fair play and into the sewer.
In Montana we have personal relationships with many of the candidates, and so we are generally by nature averse to the vitriol and extreme positions of both parties' radical fringes and their tin-eared out-of-state campaign advisors.
Take the Jon Tester/Conrad Burns race. I know both men. They're truly salt of the earth guys who come from and have raised wonderful, solid, Montana families.
Conrad' professional detractors' now depict him as "out of touch with Montana" (which is the standard accusation for anyone in our delegation once they've been elected). That characterization is hog slop, as anyone who knows Conrad knows he' still as down to the sod as a Montanan can be . . . sometimes to his own detriment.
Jon' professional detractors are calling him "liberal" (as if that' some scarlet letter) and a "law breaker" because he took a different interpretation of a minor Montana election rule.
Conrad' campaign took big dollars, (and returned them) as did many Democrats, from a lobbyist who later turned out to have been feloniously fleecing his own clients. So Conrad' assailants' mantra ever since has been that he is "plagued by scandal."
All these labels are meant by those who brandish them to be incendiary, and by the press that reports them to spur interest in the races (and of course to boost readership which helps sell ad space).
What these tactics are mostly doing is repulsing Montanans en masse to the point where only a third of those registered even bother to vote.
Conrad' never been charged with anything (except relentlessly by the press' guilt-by-association smears), and neither has Jon, and unless and until one or the other is, the character assassinations being thrown out by the opposing parties' "pros" belong on the Jerry Springer show, not in Montana politics.
For the record, neither Jon or Conrad is remotely close to wealthy, as evidenced by their recently released personal finance reports. The media charges a king' ransom for print and air time, then bashes candidates for spending so much time seeking money for their campaigns. If the press is so offended, then how about donating all their space and time in the public interest? That would put an immediate and welcome end to the money chase they find so appalling.
Meanwhile, what every Montanan I talk to would like to see, is an election based on the deeply different political and public philosophies of the candidates. There are plenty of serious issues to discuss, from immigration to education, from Iraq to the "death tax," from tort reform to tax policies to the social security time bomb.
I don't care if Jon Tester wears a flat-top, a mohawk, or a beehive; I want to know his policy proposals. Likewise, if Conrad isn't charged with anything related to scumbag Abramoff (who' conviction had nothing to do with fundraising; he essentially stole his clients' campaign contributions), then the press should drop the issue, and Conrad also needs to tell us his policy stands (and no, sorry friend, flag treatment is not a burning issue).
We also all would like to see Montana' press climb out of their current National Enquirer mold (see the mugging of John Morrison for samplers), and take some responsibility for elevating the debate by actually helping to frame the many issues on which the parties have such distinct differences, and no, sorry, whether a candidate has ever hit a rocky spot in his or her marriage, is not remotely relevant to our state' future.
Wouldn't we all like to see the party functionaries, hit squads and behind-the-curtain wizards posing as public interest groups, stay out of it?
I, for one, don't want to hear from scripted partisan mouthpieces or campaign spokespersons. I want to hear from the candidates.
And wouldn't it be nice for the candidates themselves to be statesmen and women enough that our children could read a newspaper or watch a debate without parents having to plug their ears and cover their eyes to filter the sleaze?
And candidates, please don't think we're all so naive as to believe that when some "unaffiliated" group flings scat at your opponent, that you know nothing about it or how it came to be. If you denounced those political mercenaries from the start, they couldn't function.
While you're "cleaning" house, consider firing your "consultants," whose messages routinely pander to the most base prejudices of both parties' base, and demean the intelligence of voters everywhere.
Note to the Republicans: whatever nincompoop thought of going after Tester' haircut ought to be fired instantly, and never allowed near a Montana campaign again. Is this the same high priced advisor who said to go after Schweitzer' jeans? Someone needs to get their head out of their asp!
Note to the Democrats: whatever soulless drive-by shooter of a consultant advised going after Conrad' daughter (who slogged her way through years of school to become an M.D.), just because she served for free for a short while on a corporate research board, should also be tossed off the campaign boat and fed to the fish.
Both parties--and the press--are equally guilty of taking politics down into the muck, and all have the responsibility to lift them out.
But the final indispensable element to cleaning up our campaigns is for us, the voters, to want and insist that they be cleaned up. We have to grow up and wean ourselves from our own Jerry Springeresque voyeurism. In the end, the press only goes sensational, and the candidates only go negative, because those approaches "sell" and that' clearly our fault.
When polling shows the majority knows little of the education funding debate or the social security conundrum, but knows every salacious rumor of a candidate' supposed "moral" peccadilloes, which do you think the press (and the parties) are going to use to get our attention? It does no good to exhort the candidates to higher ground if we stay mired in low places.
There are hundreds of races in Montana pitting fine, talented, experienced people against each other. In many we know both candidates well and personally: Jon and Conrad, Denny and Monica, and on and on, which makes our choice difficult.
As a citizen, I'd love to hear and see intelligent, reasoned debate between them on our state and national issues, to help me decide.
I will tell you, however, which ones won't get my vote, or any more of my contributions: the ones who go dirty first.
Like most Montanans, I am sick to death of such puerile trash-talk and back alley caterwaling.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, July, 2006, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.