Congressman and aspiring governor Mark Green has been cowering under some heavy fire lately. Last Monday, a Dane County circuit court judge upheld an order forcing Green to give up $467,844 in campaign funds illegally transferred between his federal and state accounts. Gov. Jim Doyle has been squirming under similar criticism for hiring a lawyer to lobby the board responsible for sending Green to court. Both Doyle and Green have gleefully exploited each other's fiscal and ethical scandals in their respective campaigns.
Even before these debacles ballooned to the degree that exists today, either side of the campaign — sadly, only two major contenders exist in our system — concerned themselves primarily with verbally attacking the other camp. Whether assigning blame to each other for the rise in property taxes, accusing Doyle of falsely balancing the budget, extracting possible flaws in Green's education plan, pointing to Doyle's suspicious travel contract granted to a campaign contributor or bringing to mind Green's congressional votes for measures that may have increased the national debt, the candidates simply cannot keep their hands off one another.
Of the 45 press releases issued from Sept. 19 through Sept. 26 by the Wisconsin Republican and Democratic parties, as well as the Doyle and Green campaign offices, 33 have directly and savagely attacked the opposing party, without offering even the slightest hint of any good qualities the right candidate possesses, or even how the right candidate would do things differently, apart from one or two sentences hastily slapped on the end, similar to "[This candidate] would make a much better governor than [the other candidate], who spreads mayonnaise on babies and eats them."
A campaign that concentrates on attacking the opponent creates an enormous disservice for the voter. In a modern representative democracy, the constituency should elect someone who upholds similar values and ideals. But first, the constituents must have information on the candidates' platforms. People already uncover plenty of political dirt concerning the candidates from the media, but they can only learn about candidates' platforms from the politicians themselves. When the gubernatorial hopefuls spend more time blasting their rivals, they spend less time describing their own intended policies to their constituents. The voter who casually follows the news is left with only the vaguest notion of what specifically the contenders plan to do once in office, but retains a wealth of information from politicians and the media on how badly each candidate screwed up in the past week. Constituents, unless they uphold a staunch party advocacy, end up voting for whoever was flooded with the best (or least worst) PR, and not for someone who had similar values.
Unfortunately, little to no hope lies in seeing any change of political strategy. Strategically speaking, a campaign centered on constant attacks is a safe bet for the politician and his party. By focusing on the evil, wretched, satanic qualities of his opponent, the candidate can afford to generalize his own platform to the point where nearly everyone agrees with him. "I will create more jobs" is a popular political promise supported by the majority of the population, especially the people without jobs. However, the assertion often continues with one or two vague, sugarcoated details, giving the audience a rather fuzzy, general idea of his specific plans but a definite repulsion to the other candidate.
Glossing over the details of a candidate's own platform and dissecting the dirt from the other party is a cowardly, shameful way to seduce a wider range of voters. Negative advertising works all too well in this two-party system and serves to pull our nation further into bitter partisanship. The voter can only do his or her best to look beyond finger pointing and gain a less one-sided perspective.
Jack Garigliano ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in English.
