It's that time again - mail boxes filled with political flyers trashing candidates. The only positive thing about this nonsense is that the post office needs the business.
Non-stop television and radio ads trashing candidates - nothing at all positive about this babble. It enriches the media, especially the television medium, but does nothing to inform voters. Those who endorse the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision that further opened the floodgates for campaign money tell us that this is great because money is speech, more information is good, and it "educates" voters on candidates' positions. They call it "education?" These are the same people who cut funding for schools.
This all brings back memories of my quest for public office back in 2008. Until one runs for a hotly-contested partisan political office, it is impossible to comprehend how all-consuming the effort is, and how dominant is the role of money in these campaigns.
With the exception of the Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, my opponent had the richest war chest of the entire 99 members of that august body. And, he used it in the campaign.
If that were not enough, his well-heeled out-of-state supporters poured tons of money into flyers and television ads out of Madison trashing me all over southern Wisconsin - complete with my home phone number. I received numerous irate phone calls on my home phone from people not even in my district.
Okay, so that's the way the game is played. Problem was that I had zero funds with which to counter-punch on television. He had the money - I didn't.
Would that have made a difference in the outcome? Who knows? But negative advertising has been proven to work. People say that they pay no attention to those nasty flyers and ridiculous television ads, and maybe most of them don't. But some surely do. One guy told me that he voted against me because of what one of those flyers said, adding that "they couldn't say it if it weren't true." He could not have been unique.
Probably the most bizarre of those flyers pictured a wheelchair, with the caption that I and my "Madison special interest friends" supported a "possibly illegal" tax plan that would tax wheelchairs and farm inputs. I didn't know that I had any "Madison special interest friends." And, a kid raised on a farm recommending taxing farm inputs? And recommending taxes on wheelchairs?
Well, that's politics - if there's not a serious blot on a candidate's record, just invent something, and the more outlandish, the better.
The flyer that I actually sort of enjoyed, and was the most cleverly conceived, was the one that said "Don't let Waelti gamble with your money," and pictured me with the Queen of Diamonds. That was doubtlessly a subliminal reference to one of my favorite movies, "The Manchurian Candidate," starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury. During the Korean War an American army squad was captured, sent to Manchuria, hypnotized, brain-washed, and then released. The queen of diamonds was the trigger that would turn the squad leader (portrayed by Laurance Harvey) into an assassin under the control of his Communist controller - who turned out to be the soldier's mother.
While it is a bizarre and surreal experience to see yourself trashed on major television networks, and discouraging not to have the dough to counter-punch, it could have been worse. The supreme insult would have been to be ignored, with your opponent and his well-heeled out-of-state goon squads not taking you seriously enough to spend any dough against you.
Other than losing the election, all that trashing didn't render permanent damage. I continued to get requests to serve on various boards, commissions, and committees - with one exception, that is. Our governor eschewed the option to reappoint me to the Southwest Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission - even though key local officials urged that I be reappointed.
But the governor was polite. His letter informing me of my non-reappointment thanked me for my past service.
It is partisan offices, from legislative seats on up, where serious campaign money is involved. And In many states, including Wisconsin, even nominally non-partisan State Supreme Court races involve money. This is a trend we should worry about even more than for legislative and executive branch seats.
Is there any chance that money could eventually play a smaller role in elections? I have long argued, "Not a chance. It's Catch-22." The chief beneficiaries of the existing system characterized by the increasing role of money are the media and the most powerful politicians having access to big money. Powerful politicians, with aid of the media, have the power to change the system. But as powerful politicians and the media are the chief beneficiaries of the existing system, they have every incentive not to change it. Hence, Catch-22.
The tragedy of all this is that people become alienated from the system, not participating at the local party level, not making their small financial contributions and, too often, not even voting. Diminished citizen participation further enhances the power of big financial contributors, alienating voters even further, accelerating the downward spiral.
And finally, another tragedy of disillusionment and disengagement from politics and government is that it tends to spill over to all levels of government and elected officials. So much of the day-to-day aspects of our lives depend on smoothly functioning towns, villages, cities, and counties. Mayors, aldermen, village and town supervisors, county board members, and various other local officials put in considerable time and effort, and serve with minimal pay. Most do it out of a sense of civic responsibility.
In the midst of all the political hi-jinx of partisan elections for higher office, we need to emphasize the importance of constructively engaging in local government and respecting the contributions made by participants at that level.
- John Waelti's column appears every Friday in the Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
Non-stop television and radio ads trashing candidates - nothing at all positive about this babble. It enriches the media, especially the television medium, but does nothing to inform voters. Those who endorse the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision that further opened the floodgates for campaign money tell us that this is great because money is speech, more information is good, and it "educates" voters on candidates' positions. They call it "education?" These are the same people who cut funding for schools.
This all brings back memories of my quest for public office back in 2008. Until one runs for a hotly-contested partisan political office, it is impossible to comprehend how all-consuming the effort is, and how dominant is the role of money in these campaigns.
With the exception of the Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, my opponent had the richest war chest of the entire 99 members of that august body. And, he used it in the campaign.
If that were not enough, his well-heeled out-of-state supporters poured tons of money into flyers and television ads out of Madison trashing me all over southern Wisconsin - complete with my home phone number. I received numerous irate phone calls on my home phone from people not even in my district.
Okay, so that's the way the game is played. Problem was that I had zero funds with which to counter-punch on television. He had the money - I didn't.
Would that have made a difference in the outcome? Who knows? But negative advertising has been proven to work. People say that they pay no attention to those nasty flyers and ridiculous television ads, and maybe most of them don't. But some surely do. One guy told me that he voted against me because of what one of those flyers said, adding that "they couldn't say it if it weren't true." He could not have been unique.
Probably the most bizarre of those flyers pictured a wheelchair, with the caption that I and my "Madison special interest friends" supported a "possibly illegal" tax plan that would tax wheelchairs and farm inputs. I didn't know that I had any "Madison special interest friends." And, a kid raised on a farm recommending taxing farm inputs? And recommending taxes on wheelchairs?
Well, that's politics - if there's not a serious blot on a candidate's record, just invent something, and the more outlandish, the better.
The flyer that I actually sort of enjoyed, and was the most cleverly conceived, was the one that said "Don't let Waelti gamble with your money," and pictured me with the Queen of Diamonds. That was doubtlessly a subliminal reference to one of my favorite movies, "The Manchurian Candidate," starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury. During the Korean War an American army squad was captured, sent to Manchuria, hypnotized, brain-washed, and then released. The queen of diamonds was the trigger that would turn the squad leader (portrayed by Laurance Harvey) into an assassin under the control of his Communist controller - who turned out to be the soldier's mother.
While it is a bizarre and surreal experience to see yourself trashed on major television networks, and discouraging not to have the dough to counter-punch, it could have been worse. The supreme insult would have been to be ignored, with your opponent and his well-heeled out-of-state goon squads not taking you seriously enough to spend any dough against you.
Other than losing the election, all that trashing didn't render permanent damage. I continued to get requests to serve on various boards, commissions, and committees - with one exception, that is. Our governor eschewed the option to reappoint me to the Southwest Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission - even though key local officials urged that I be reappointed.
But the governor was polite. His letter informing me of my non-reappointment thanked me for my past service.
It is partisan offices, from legislative seats on up, where serious campaign money is involved. And In many states, including Wisconsin, even nominally non-partisan State Supreme Court races involve money. This is a trend we should worry about even more than for legislative and executive branch seats.
Is there any chance that money could eventually play a smaller role in elections? I have long argued, "Not a chance. It's Catch-22." The chief beneficiaries of the existing system characterized by the increasing role of money are the media and the most powerful politicians having access to big money. Powerful politicians, with aid of the media, have the power to change the system. But as powerful politicians and the media are the chief beneficiaries of the existing system, they have every incentive not to change it. Hence, Catch-22.
The tragedy of all this is that people become alienated from the system, not participating at the local party level, not making their small financial contributions and, too often, not even voting. Diminished citizen participation further enhances the power of big financial contributors, alienating voters even further, accelerating the downward spiral.
And finally, another tragedy of disillusionment and disengagement from politics and government is that it tends to spill over to all levels of government and elected officials. So much of the day-to-day aspects of our lives depend on smoothly functioning towns, villages, cities, and counties. Mayors, aldermen, village and town supervisors, county board members, and various other local officials put in considerable time and effort, and serve with minimal pay. Most do it out of a sense of civic responsibility.
In the midst of all the political hi-jinx of partisan elections for higher office, we need to emphasize the importance of constructively engaging in local government and respecting the contributions made by participants at that level.
- John Waelti's column appears every Friday in the Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
