Thankfully, the primary season is over. Now the candidates can shed some of the extreme views they espoused in order to win over core party members and secure the nomination. They will now gently unabashedly back towards the mainstream middle because they know that’s where most of the votes reside.
In the once-golden state of California, that means that Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, Republican nominees for, respectively, governor and U.S. senator can quit pretending that they are more conservative than the late, great Ronald Reagan. While seeking the nomination, they courted hard right conservatives within their party on nearly every hot-button issue. They promised, for example, to stop illegal immigration and oppose any kind of amnesty. Now, watch these positions soften as they campaign against the veteran Democrat Jerry Brown, who for some reason wants to be governor again, and the ultra-liberal incumbent senator, Barbara Boxer, in a state where liberals greatly outnumber conservatives and Democrats backed by public employee unions generally have their way with voters.
Some justify this hypocritical behavior by the candidates on the grounds that you can’t change anything if you don’t win. But the public shows signs of tiring of party politics. Witness passage in California of the open primary proposition where the top two vote-getters in a single primary, regardless of party affiliation, will be the only choices on the ballot in the general election. Voters, it seems, are also tiring of political promises that can’t or won’t be kept. Again, witness the decline in popularity of lame duck governor Arnold Schwarzennegar. He, too, came charging into office, replacing the recalled Gov. Gray Davis, on a promise to change things on Sacramento. Nothing changed much except for the worse. After awhile in office, he drifted back toward the moderate middle and the tax-and-spend liberals in the legislature took over again.
Most politicians must think that we voters are gullible. (There is, of course, considerable evidence to support that view.) The greatest affront to voter intelligence is the vicious attack ads they knowingly approve. In the bitter advertising duels waged by multi millionaires Whitman and Steve Poizner, the unsuccessful candidate for the gubernatorial nomination, each accused the other of harboring liberal views on immigration. Each could have saved money by using each other’s ads and just changing the names and photos. But, of course, money was no object. Winning was.
Even worse are the ads in support of or opposition to the numerous propositions and initiatives that customarily pollute the California ballot. These campaigns are often given nicknames that are so misleading as to be nearly dishonest. Naïve voters who won’t take the time to research issues are often duped into voting for the opposite of what they thought they were voting for.
And don’t you just love those survey questionnaires sent out by the campaign organizations and political parties to obtain your views on a variety of “key” issues. They arrive in official-looking envelopes, with “ConfidentialDeliver to addressee only” and a serial number stamped on the envelope, all designed to flatter you into thinking that they really value your opinion. What they value most of all, of course, is the contribution they are asking you to enclose. Their views are already pretty firmly established in their party platforms. What they need now is your money and they’ll inflate your ego to get it.
Apparently the Obama Administration is not above sending out propaganda, either. Case in point is that hilarious mailer recently sent out by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, whatever they may be, containing a message from Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. The text begins with the following whopper: “The Affordable Care Act passed by Congress and signed by President Obama this year will provide you and your family greater savings and increased quality health care.” It gets better. “These are needed improvements that will keep Medicare strong and solvent,” it continued. At this point, I choked on my Cheerios.
In the coming months we will hear and read lots of promises coming from candidates about what they will accomplish. Unfortunately, many voters will take them at their word without any evidence that these politicians have the ability or will to effect transformational change in an entrenched bureaucracy that strongly resists change. They will believe them because they want to believe that their candidates are, somehow, endowed with superhuman qualities.
They are not. They are human. The best that we can hope for is that they know how to lead and that they are honest with respect to what government can or cannot realistically and affordably accomplish.
Copyright 2010, J. F. Kelly, Jr.
