HOW MIGHT WE BETTER TOVERN OURSELVES? BY WORKING TOGETHER

When voters get right down to it, this year's campaigns, ranging from the presidency down to the county constabulary, are really about just one subject: How might we better govern ourselves. That's it. It's the basic premise of every campaign and election to be held in the year 2000.

Oh, it's true, George Bush and John McCain might have had different takes on a limited number of issues, but they basically agreed on the need for conservative leadership of our representative republic. Al Gore and Bill Bradley might have argued over how best to extend health care to all 273 million of us, but both were quick to note their undying support of improved public health.

The differences on both sides in both parties are not so great as the candidates have been presenting them, while they search for just the right bait to drag in new supporters on election day. Sometimes the differences are so minuscule the office-seekers must distort the views of their opponents. Otherwise it would appear voters aren't being offered the kind of choice we seem to want when it comes time to elect men and women to hold public office in Washington or Jefferson City or in any of the state's 114 counties.

In the end, of course, most candidates are judged by standards that have nothing to do with health care or statehouse programs or county law enforcement policies. The seekers must become the policy stalkers when it comes time to choose on the basis of subjects discussed, debated and argued during the campaign. McCain needed to separate himself from the similar viewpoints of Bush and quickly began emphasizing that he would never lie to the American public, as if falsehoods were a part of his opponent's pledge to voters. As Gore and Bradley found themselves vying for pretty much the same party constituency, they both engaged in something resembling a race to the left.

Regardless of the bogus and manufacturing differences between both Democratic and Republican candidates, the ultimate decision of the vast majority of us is which man can effectively run the complicated maze of federal or state governments to deliver the best possible services. Since it's difficult to predict the answer to this question, voters reluctantly base their choices on numerous other factors, some involving criteria far from having any significance or importance.

Not long ago I heard a woman, visiting with an acquaintance about the GOP presidential contest, say in a voice of sufficient volume to extend over two supermarket aisles, "I hate that smirk Bush gets on his face." Chalk one up for McCain, whose mellower smirk obviously doesn't bother the lady. "Gore is so stiff," an outstate Missouri party leader complained to a group of cohorts at an afternoon coffee table. "He's like a robot," the critic said just before endorsing Bradley.

We voters may experience difficulty in separating many of the views of the candidates but, by George, we know what we like and what we don't like, even if neither the positive nor negative has anything to do with how effective the individual will govern. Preserving Social Security for the next generation seems to decline on our priority list when it comes to such vital characteristics as smirking and body rigidity.

Most disturbing of all, however, is the failure of campaigns, whether locally, statewide or national, to deal with effective ways for elected officials to govern well, properly and for the benefit of the greatest number. Has anyone heard any of the four major presidential candidates discuss at any length any suggestions or plans to accomplish this essential goal? I haven't, and I doubt if you have either.

Someday perhaps far in the future, Americans will say to those who seek to represent them in important public offices, "Let's spend this campaign discussing how you propose to govern more effectively and for the greatest benefit of the greatest number." Putting it another way, voters should demand that each candidate outline his or her proposals to achieve programs that will supply the needs of the governed. Otherwise, voters will assume that candidates are willing to pursue the same old back-and-forth partisan battles that eventually have nothing to do with public service and have everything to do with defeating the opposition.

Wouldn't it be refreshing to hear a candidate say that, if elected, he planned to resolve the health-care crisis we as a nation are facing today by demanding that both political parties put aside selfish ideological differences in the interest of finding a workable solution? In order to be successful, nonpartisan solutions require less emphasis on political aggrandizement and more encouragement to minimize partisanship in favor of nonpartisanship. One of these miracles occurred in 1983 when representatives of President Reagan and the party leaderships on Capitol Hill colluded to save Social Security, which at the time was in imminent danger of bankruptcy. It was a case study of how to conduct nonpartisan collusion to solve a problem worrying all Americans.

Still another tactic, with many similarities to the one just cited, is the creation of ad hoc task commissions that center on a particular unresolved problem. This is the method Washington has used to get around the long-standing political nightmare of which military bases are closed and which to keep.

Both of these methods could resolve some very fundamental, long-standing problems facing both federal and state capitals, yet both remain under utilized, even unused because of the blind pursuit of partisan gain at the expense of public gain.

What America needs today, though we don't seem to recognize it, is a more realistic and down-to-earth form of division-of-labor democracy.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.