IN A WORD, WHAT'S THE BIG WHOOP ABOUT ELECTION CAMPAIGNS?

In other words, to borrow an old comedic quip, what's the big whoop?

I believe it can be best understood in results of numerous opinion polls showing millions of citizens profoundly dissatisfied with the functioning of their political system. Consequently, there is widespread disposition in both our state and our nation -- at all levels of society, from the grass roots to the corporate boardroom -- to want to make our democracy work better and govern better.

In today's highly contested atmosphere, there is a tendency to believe the contests we are watching in the electronic and print media have something to do with how we will be governed -- and how our lives will be affected -- when the winners are enthroned and the losers retire from public sight. Millions feel that if George Bush moves from Austin to Washington, we will be transported from a Clintonese world to one resembling the period from 1989 to 1993 when his father occupied the Oval Office. If we elect Al Gore, we suspect it will not be much different than the kind of governance we have had since 1993, minus, of course, l'affaire a la Monica.

Do we really expect a McCain administration to be vastly different from a Bradley tenure, and if so, what makes us believe the systemic problems that have bedeviled and besieged past presidents since at least the Andrew Jackson administration, will suddenly disappear? Whatever the outcomes of Nov. 7, the most substantive change will be in the faces of the occupants, not in their administrative rule books. Why? Because the rule books are written by an entirely different cast of characters that include 100 members of the U.S. Senate and 435 members of the House of Representatives, nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, 100 state governors and 100 state legislatures, the rulers of hundreds of known and anonymous nations around the world, a small band of foreign delegates at the United Nations and literally hundreds of organizations in our own country ranging from the Sierra Club to the Missouri Farm Bureau Federation to the National Rifle Association.

Each of the organizations named, and thousands of other groups not mentioned, will have some impact on how our democracy functions for the next four years.

Amid realization of this metapolitical transformation of our representative republic, one idea transcends all the rest: most American still will not grow less dissatisfied with the functioning of their political system. It is worth noting that American elections are not about transforming this system; they are merely the exercise we must endure to power the system that so many feel has failed them.

There are at least four possible, or at least recognizable, alternations that merit mention at this point. One solution would be the creation of so-called electronic town meetings in which citizens would be asked to select a course of action for either our federal or state governments. An electronic link between fifty million U.S. homes and 1600 Pennsylvania could include both foreign and domestic issues, while a state hookup could include questions on taxes or prisons.

A second remedy could be the creation of thousands of issues groups throughout the country, meeting regularly in large and tiny communities to discuss unresolved issues, with findings rendered to the Oval Office.

A third proposal is to adopt at the national level the kind of initiative referendum process we have in Missouri and many other states. The idea of citizen-initiated lawmaking has appealed to many since the progressive era of Teddy Roosevelt and could be utilized, with proper rules, nationally.

A fourth and last proposal would mimc the state-level reform of term limits, removing all federally elected officials upon completion of a proscribed tenure. Although resisted in much of Washington, the irony is that several Missourians now serving there were responsible for initiating it in Jefferson City but strongly resist implementing limits when their own careers are affected. The general public favors an expansion of term limitation even as many fail to recognize its political motivations while applauding its obvious corrective mandates. Accompanying this plan is the added implementation of replacing long-term career politicians with citizen legislators, and against he irony is missed when advocates fail to recognize that all beginners fit the citizens designation as they desperately seek to become long-term, career officeholders.

Any or all of these four remedies might well create the reforms the American public consistently recommends for its governing bodies at both state and federal levels. Again, any or all could be proposed and even implemented without much difficulty. The unfortunate catch in reforming conditions to meet citizens' expectations is that the candidates we are selecting in this year's election season believe the only goal that counts in reaching improved governing is realized when they receive a majority of votes cast at the polls.

The big whoop about campaigns is that too many believe they solve the real problems that weaken our democracy.

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