HOW THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM HAS FAILED US

Perhaps the best benediction for the Campaign of 1992 is that it's over.

It was too much to expect that we could escape an election-eve flurry of 30-minute commercials by the candidates, and so just hours before Americans went to the polls, we were even denied an evening to ourselves just to review the candidates and contemplate our decisions in the voting booth the next day.

For the past six months, it has seemed that every time we turned around, there was a candidate for some public office, passing around his guaranteed elixir for better government, better jobs, better futures, even better families. If we weren't careful, we would accept these nostrums as truth. Isn't it strange that in a nation with such a vast reservoir of talent and intelligence and proven records, we had three candidates for president who often had trouble demonstrating even a modicum of common sense and common decency?

If Campaign '92 was not a vintage year on the national level, it seemed little better here in our own state. Right after the Aug. 4 primary, state candidates began what surely was one of the lowest level campaigns in our state's history. The worst contest, by far, was the one for governor, pitting two sitting state officials who must have decided early on that nothing would be considered off-limits when it came to winning the election.

The second worst contest was for the office of attorney general, where seemingly one cannot be elected unless the word "liar" is inserted in campaign literature and on television commercials. Whatever happened to such old-fashioned words as prevarication and distortion? They are obviously much too tame for today's brand of candidates.

The race for U.S. senator didn't win any awards for restraint, either, and it left many voters wondering how two persons could engage in such vitriol and still feel good about themselves.

There was less slime in races for lieutenant governor, secretary of state and state treasurer, but one cynically suspects that the absence of malice could be traced to the lesser significance of these jobs rather than any high-minded principles for keeping the electoral process free of verbal assault and battery.

It seems pretty clear, then, that the campaign process was driven not by motivations to outline solutions for state and national problems but by the unending desire to trash the opponent. It seems to work, although those who contend that Americans like dirty campaigns and will respond to them don't give the public credit for the ability to pick the better candidate.

We're still not convinced that the average voter will respond like some Pavlovian dog to character attacks and record distortions while ignoring the important issues. The average Americans can distinguish between wheat and chaff and will not automatically choose the latter. We don't believe that despite the cynical conclusions of many reporters and commentators in the media.

The great tragedy of this and every other slimy campaign in the past is that the candidates who wage them take away from the public its inherent right to choose candidates based on the highest level of public service rather than the lowest level. Campaigns are financed and instituted for the public, not the politicians who engage in them. These campaigns are designed to inform, educate and persuade voters, not insult, badger and literally beat them over the head with non-germane issues and charges.

We haven't spoken to a single state candidate who would sanction the conduct displayed throughout this campaign. Every one condemned it, using such accurate words as disgraceful and mindless to describe it. Without yet realizing what really happened this year, voters seem unaware of the fact that they were powerless throughout the period to set the agenda for the candidates. The reverse was true. The candidates wrote both the music and the lyrics, then sang the melody, and all the while the public danced to the music without realizing they were paying for the entire performance.

The result was that this year's campaign for governor was mostly about a rather insignificant state injury program and a seemingly endless chanting of distortions and half-truths. The race for attorney general was about how to resolve two federal school desegregation cases, which certainly cannot be ended by one state official or they would have been ended years ago.

Generally speaking Missourians know little more about the resolution of important state problems today than they did when this long campaign began several months ago. We know much more about the alleged misconduct of the candidates than we know about the problems in Jefferson City that cry out for solution. The reason for this is that the candidates rather than the voters have the power to focus the campaign on issues that best suit their own purposes, not the needs of 5.1 million Missourians. This is where the candidates failed us, for they set their own political agenda above that of the state as whole.

The candidates' own agendas may win elections, but they don't address nor resolve state problems. The candidates may explain this away by saying they have to win the election before they can address the issues, but this puts the cart before the horse. The public has no vested interest in any candidate winning the election, but it has a significant interest in addressing the problems of Missouri.

The candidates who forget this principle generally make the poorest office-holders, not because they don't attempt to resolve problems, but because they gained their position without a firm mandate from those they now must convince, challenge and lead.

This is where today's electoral system has failed us.