Yesterday, on the MinnPost website, Myles Spicer posted an op-ed piece with some timely criticisms and constructive suggestions about American presidential campaigns.If you're interested enough to read it, I hope you will post a comment to let me know what you think. Where do you think Spicer gets it right, and where do you think he gets it wrong?
An Excerpt from Spicer's Op-Ed Piece:
The “silly season” is now upon us, and the American electorate will have to endure months of that deadly quadrennial activity we call: presidential elections! Our presidential elections have degenerated into an obscene morass of money, personal attacks and negativism. No wonder the public has so little regard for government.
Worse yet, the trend seems to be a further decline each election cycle, and amelioration or improvement is nowhere in sight. The reasons are many, but they are worth examining if positive change is to be made.
Read the Complete Article
Hmmm. As much as I appreciate Spicer as an "old liberal", he sometimes verges on being a "crotchety old liberal" in some of his columns. He does have one suggestion here that I concur with - that of a limit on the campaign season. Problematically, the season has been stretched to its current length by the states themselves, and limiting states rights is clearly out of the question, especially as it goes to primaries and caucuses. Too bad. Another issue I think Spicer misses on the point is that of inter-party politics. The ongoing nature of campaigns is not only germane to presidential races. I will point to the campaigns of individuals vying for the DFL nomination for MN governor in 2010 as one example of the fever pitch of "silly season" that can occur.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Spicer's assessment of the Citizen's United decision, I am not surprised he called it "the worst (and most damaging) reading of law in modern history." And while I personally would have liked to see it, I am not convinced that if the lower courts were upheld that we would find reprieve from the attack ads. The BCRA never went far enough to uproot the myriad of funding pipelines that fuel the campaigns...it just made some campaigns work harder to cook the books.
Regarding voter ID: I am a progressive, but I simply don't see the opponent's side on this one. Senior citizens, minorities, and others who will evidently be "disenfranchised" from voting by Voter ID don't aren't even the majority among the 7% of MN eligible voters who don't have government IDs. In our society, we push for online security, using every possible verification and identification of people registering on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., but we try to keep things loose and open for elections? I don't get it.
I wholeheartedly agree with Spicer's observation of the effect of the political fringe. He tries to overemphasize the effect on the right, but it is the same on the left. Look no further than the DFL for proof.
Finally, on the point of negativity during campaigns. For some reason good ol' fashioned dissent has been re-branded as "negativity" by many pundits. The American electorate knows the difference between an "attack ad" and "dissent" - especially when the campaign material lacks factual foundation. There is a specific tone about it. Unfortunately, our politically correct society has taken disagreement and dissent out of context and made it shameful, so now every ad we see is "negative" even when it is factual and simply supports the candidate's platform. Can some campaigns do better? Absolutely, but we need to understand that without dissent, we would not move forward. There is nothing negative about that.
Thanks, Kris. Great observations.
ReplyDeleteInteresting article. I agree with the author that the Citizen's United decision has been a disasterous one for American politics in that they allow the select few to have such a powerful voice over everyone else. The interests of the few then get a larger share of politicians attention, and the majority feel left out of the process.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kris above on the Voter ID issue. The cynic in me knows that some (not all) of the proponents of mandating a photo ID simply want to discourage certain groups of voters, the realist in me is astounded that given how often we need to show IDs in our daily lives, that we are able to vote without it. Ideally, I would like to see both sides agree to a photo ID requirement on the condition that unlike most other Government processes, we make photo IDs easily available.
I don't pretend to know the answer, but it is frustrating to see what the state of election season has become. It would seem to me that this should actually be a time people look forward to - a chance to hear new ideas and gain new perspectives from smart people who truly want the best for our nation. It should be a chance to celebrate the freedom we have to chart our own course when it comes to representation. Instead, its become a time (that seems to be getting longer and longer) that most people dread. The most frustrating aspect is that the people with the power to change it for the better, are not interested in doing so.
I find it fascinating that the U.S. will spend millions of dollars on trivial-to-hack voting machines, or fight over voter registration cards, instead of simply going with the purple ink.
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