People who know me best can tell you, if pressed, that I am something of a hopeless romantic. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I believe that the improbable will eventually happen. My beloved Red Sox will win the World Series, true love will come to me and somehow this year's gubernatorial election would be fought on the merits, without any resort to mudslinging and misrepresentations.
Well, it turns out that one of these prayers was answered, but only halfway. The Democratic primary between U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, D-Milwaukee, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and eventual-victor state Attorney General Jim Doyle was clean and well-fought. Moreover, the candidates made a concerted, if incomplete, effort to focus on the issues that the people of Wisconsin need to have addressed. And all of this was to the good.
But the salad days of August are a faint memory now. A reasoned discussion of the problems facing the state's government has been replaced by a load of nonsense'delivered to us by two candidates with a lust for power, partisan backers without scruples and a campaign finance system with no sense of decency.
Let us review. Gov. Scott McCallum, the first man into the fray, began an ongoing series of Doyle will raise-your-taxes advertisements shortly after the primary. This incessant message has only been broken up by a recent ad on education filled with smiling kids and vapid statements. For its part, the Republican Party has engaged in various acts of issue advocacy (read: campaign ads that evade campaign finance reporting requirements only by sleight of hand) that are both mean-spirited and downright maddening. In response, the Doyle camp produced ads that highlighted McCallum's dreadful handling of the state budget, but provided no details on Doyle's own plans to fix the current situation. The Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teacher union, has fired off several independent expenditures along the same lines.
I realize that the experienced political analyst will say that, however dubious attack ads may be, they work. Attack ads make political opponents look ineffective or malicious or just plain awful. And their appearance on the airwaves can dramatically erode the chances of the targeted candidate's electoral success. It has to be made clear that winning this election by any means available and setting this state on the right path are not the same thing.
For the last two years, the people of this state have been subjected to stories of corruption, to the general inaction of the Legislature and to two separate budgets that were'to be charitable'complete frauds. They have asked their elected officials to look past their personal ambitions. But more than anything else, they have demanded answers. The people have been literally begging for the solutions to the problems that threaten to tear this state apart in the next few years. And thus far in this general election season, the two leading candidates for the state's highest office have abused the people they need to convince and done little else.
As of late last week, there was one faint hope for a substantive discussion of the issues. As I sat down to watch Friday's gubernatorial debate, I believed that I would finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I thought, \You really cannot expect these two guys to hand out all of the details in 30-second ads. By the end of the hour, each candidate will have a total of 20 minutes to speak. Surely, they will find the time to say something meaningful.""
I bought into the hope. But my hopes betrayed me yet again. There were slight hints of policy discourse on occasion, but the debate was largely an hour-long version of the thrust and parry that I have seen for the past month.
All indications are that the mudslinging is going to get worse. Pete Millard, a reporter for The Business Journal in Milwaukee wrote last week that Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce'the state's major business lobby'will launch a series of anti-Doyle ads in the next week. And the Wisconsin Pro-Life Coalition, the National Rifle Association and various environmental organizations will join them. All told, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign is projecting that $4 to 6 million will be spent in the last month of the campaign'compared to the $2.3 million spent in September.
McCallum and Doyle are unwilling to drop the attacks and to discuss the details of their plans. Nor are they willing to even attempt to put a leash on their surrogates. This behavior is making me very impatient'and somewhat willing to abandon them both for a third-party candidate.
