CAUSTIC CAMPAIGN CORRUPTION

It is regrettable, but true. Today's campaign for the office of U.S. senator from Missouri has become embroiled in caustic charges, irrelevant issues and foolish flotsam that serves not in the least the voting public. Unless there is a dramatic shift in policy, Missouri voters will go to the polls on Nov. 8 with no better view of the candidates than they had at the start of this campaign season.

Although it may be naive to exonerate either of the two major candidates, it seems the principal source of the kind of campaign we are having to endure can be laid at the doorsteps of the paid consultants, virtually all of them imported to Missouri from Washington, D.C., who have no compunction at all in attacking their opponents with irrelevant charges, and more importantly, to befoul the air of Missouri with their win-at-any-cost philosophy.

When Abraham Lincoln decided to seek the presidency, he concluded that one of his first tasks was to designate a campaign manager. He looked no farther than his close circle of friends, asking a man he had known all his life, Judge David Davis, to serve in that capacity. A respected jurist who had little experience in state politics, much less campaigns for national office, Judge Davis assumed the job and did a remarkably splendid job in directing the Lincoln candidacy. Judge Davis was the only member of the Lincoln-for-President group, and was unsalaried at that.

Contrast the Lincoln campaign with that being waged by John Ashcroft and Alan Wheat, and you will find that while there are many more persons directly involved in the efforts of both men, there is hardly a trace of the quality of the one waged from Springfield, Ill., more than 150 years ago. Lincoln made sure the voters knew how he stood on the extremely critical issues of the time, while today's candidates adopt avoidance as a campaign tactic. There was no doubt some stretching of the truth in Lincoln's day, but half-truths and distortions are today's rule, with few exceptions allowed or witnessed.

One of the nation's best-known political managers, Roger Ailes, told me a couple of years ago that his mantra for winning campaigns amounted to just three words: "Attack, attack, attack!" At least Ailes was honest, which is more than can be said for many of his peers who are now holding forth in our state. The records of both Wheat and Ashcroft have been distorted, sometimes beyond recognition, and by now many voters are so confused about the facts that they have virtually no idea what is true and what is not. Which is exactly the condition the consultants are seeking.

Many of the votes Wheat is alleged to have cast in the Congress were procedural ones, not those on final passage, and so he has often been cast as irresponsible when the facts were just the opposite. Many of the reductions Ashcroft is alleged to have made in essential services as governor simply did not occur and his overall record showed a steady funding increase for these programs. His cuts were often made to comply with constitutional requirements for a balanced budget. Charges that Wheat traveled abroad on foreign trips sponsored by special interests overlook the fact that he was a regular visitor to some of the world's most troubled nations, seeking information that would provide Congress with first-hand information.

Most of the charges from both camps are irrelevant to the campaign, which has sunk lower and lower at the behest of their professional consultants and full-time hatchet men. The result of all this mud-slinging has been a growing tendency on the part of voters to ignore the campaign, the candidates and what they are saying. The issues that have been discussed, along with many more being ignored, have been generalized to such an extent that voters have no idea how either candidate would vote on the problems facing the state and the country. Neither candidate has discussed at any length plans for assisting Missouri in the near future or the distant one, and so voters are only left to wonder how either man would help resolve many of Missouri's problems as they relate to the federal government and federal programs. This avoidance comes as a result of the expensive advice and counsel of professionals who have come to Missouri not to wage an informative campaign of ideas and issues but to win an election---regardless of cost.

Missourians deserve better.

Jack Stapleton is a veteran journalist from Kennett and a regular contributor to the Southeast Missourian.