Campaign has become too ugly

Eric H. Schmitz Albemarle County
Published: September 21, 2008

If not for the recent economic shocks being realized by every living person in America – unbridled inflation in the costs of education, health care, food, clothing, energy, travel and entertainment, accelerating evaporation of income earned and wealth accumulated by the working class – the current silly season of politics would be quite amusing. I, for one, enjoy parody. But, my apologies to “SNL,” it just ain’t funny anymore.

I am speaking of a deficit – but not one measured in dollars and cents. The deficit we need to address most is in “truthiness” and common sense. When the fact checkers inform us that neither presidential campaign is consistently scoring better than 50 percent on fact telling, we have a moral crisis. When both campaigns enable – and they do, no matter disclaimers to the contrary – tawdry muckraking and juvenile mudslinging, it may be a quaint reminder of old-time politics from the 19th century, but it is disheartening that we, the people, abide it.

Understood that politics is a contact sport, and tough. But it can be “played” both tough and honest, with the good of the people in mind. Lies serve nobody’s interest.
The deficit is one of leadership. Does it really take in excess of $800 million to sell a president these days (nearly $40 million in Florida alone)? Is that good stewardship? Does anyone really believe that money is well spent?
Three of the four campaign standard-bearers come from careers in arguably the worst performing sector of our political institutions – a Congress with a 3 percent level of confidence, worse even than President Bush.

Unable to do more than follow, two wish to lead. Another knows how to lead, perhaps, but appears to have too many senior moments. Arguably, the least experienced of all dem-onstrates the most hope for change – and I am not speaking of the man trained by the Daley machine of Chicago ward-style politics.

I guess that if you cannot extra-legally remove your competition, you can raise enough money over the Internet to buy office. Its not a bad short-term trade, I suppose, an investment of $800 million for tax credits to 95 percent of the people. But it looks a lot like a lottery – one in which we all come out on the short end of the stick.