Tricksters, Crooks, Spinmeisters and Plainspeakers

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I was watching Ed Schulz the other night and he raised an important consideration that I didn’t agree with. Ed  is an old-style, pro-Labor Liberal, a blue-collar Democrat, the kind we used to see in great number on the political landscape back in 1968. No longer. Liberals like Ed are an endangered species, like polar bears riding icebergs and gas stations that clean your windshield.

This morning i was listening to Michael Steele, the former Republican National Party Chair. He seems like the last of old-style political Conservatives I once admired— fiscally cautious, socially aware, open, forthright, with both a conscience and a brain. Where have the rest all gone? I suspect Eisenhower would have felt comfortable with Steele’s views.  But,  the former Chair too looks like one headed for a glass case at the Smithsonian.

I respect both these mens’ consistent thinking, their ability to state an opinion plainly without spinning it, and their apparent ability to park their egos at the door on TV. Ed got a dozen eggs on his face defending the unsuccessful recall in Wisconsin, Michael continually defending a party that frankly threw him over after their successful 2010 mid-term election. Do I agree with them all the time? No, obviously I can’t. But I do like hearing what they have to say on a given issue because they seem to say what they mean.

Which gets me to my point.

Today’s politicians and their surrogates (where did we come up with that awful term?) seem to be the Masters of Spin. They always need to defend their party, their candidate, and their actions, even when the matter at hand truly merits an apology or a mea culpa. Both sides have been there. Today’s attentive voter frankly wastes too much time listening to evasive answers, non-answers, and, worse, idiotic pre-programmed robo-answers from ‘headquarters’ that makes one wonder how stupid do they think we are out here?

You don’t ever get that feeling with Messrs. Schulz and Steele. There are other commenters of note, but not so many that just say what they really think. And think.

Which leads me to my next question:Where does campaign strategy leave off and dirty tricks begin???? The purpose of dirty tricks is simply to get elected. Campaign strategy advances one’s legitimate positions.  Let’s use that distinction.

I am old enough to remember the dog days of Watergate and the sneaky things Donald Segretti pulled on potential opponent Ed Muskie and his wife, and later the swift-boating of poor hapless veteran John Kerry, and, now in 2012, new hastily enacted voter ID laws making it harder for many elderly citizens to exercise their right. This is rock bottom, a dirty trick masquerading as reform. Dirty tricks must always be nipped in the bud, if not by the opposition, then certainly by voters. These are tactics employed by those who fear they can’t win honestly. In 1972, dirty tricks that went spectacularly awry ripped back the covers on a disturbing personality disorder at work in the White House, a personality so off-kilter that he brought about his own downfall. We were lucky then.

From dirty tricks we move on to outright election fraud: falsified candidacy petitions, voting more than once, filling out someone else’s absentee ballot, voting for someone who is dead, harassing voters at voting places, lying about voting hours and sites, outright graft and corruption. When dirty tricks work for you, why not push the envelope a little further? These are outrageous practices of the past that must stay there.

Voters who reward those who engage in dirty tricks or election fraud are just asking for it. Elections have consequences. Crooks and tricksters in office do terrible things, the worst just trying to stay there. You may not care, but in today’s no-holds barred world of politics, your kids are definitely watching and, chances are, taking notes.

Tom Godfrey

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