MISSOURI WATCH: ELECTION CAMPAIGN SLOGANS ALONE DON'T CURE SOCIETY'S PROBLEMS

It is spiritually ennobling but intellectually troubling to observe citizen trust in the ability of political candidates to resolve society's ills.

Despite the permanence of socioeconomic problems that have lifetimes much longer than mere humans, most of us have confidence that if the candidates we have chosen for the offices of president/governor/congressman/legislator are elected, the world will be righted, justice will prevail and solutions are just down the road and around the bend.

Counting Bill Clinton, America has had 42 presidents and it is no exaggeration to say that only a few of them have, singlehandedly, provided workable plans to resolve true national dilemmas. Much of the problem solving offered by elected officials deals with form rather than substance; such as programs that appeal to the senses but which over the long haul offer only unsatisfactory, even unworkable, steps toward satisfactory solutions.

As constitutionally and politically powerful as the office of president may be, great efforts to resolve great national and state problems require the intelligence, energy and dedication of scores, even hundreds, of individuals. It is no exaggeration to say that America's most powerful leader was King George III.

Benito Mussolini forged the kind of government that permitted him to achieve the timely arrival and departure of Italian trains. One hundred sixty years before, the handful of men who designed our political system and the way it was to be administered weren't interested in train timetables but in guaranteeing the end of monarchical despotism as provided by the above named English king.

The system devised for our new nation in 1782 precludes one-man resolution. Solving national dilemmas requires the work and talents of many, both elected and unelected; it must have the support of more than one party; it must be endorsed, even tacitly, by at least 49 percent of the governed. Our system even counts on at least another 49 percent adopting an indifferent view toward proposed changes and solutions.

The executive mansion in Jefferson City is not the only legacy that passes from one governor to the next. Missouri's problems, almost all of them long-standing, are passed from one executive to another, so that on a cold January noon every four years, some new governor experiences the litany of unsolved dilemmas that his predecessor has dealt with---but never resolved.

Whether it is the chronic poverty of Missouri's rural areas or the overwhelming decay of urban slums or an horrific drug addiction culture or disturbing scholastic achievement scores, the legacy has been consistent even as its permanence has been ignored by extremely ambitious men and women seeking public office, but more importantly, by the public at large.

The permanent tendency of elected officials to overlook and ignore the concrete-firm animosity between urban and rural serves to exacerbate the problem, yet in the legislative halls of our state, the most disturbing, counterproductive and harmful division of geography is as pejorative as political differences. This problem isn't even addressed in Jefferson City, yet it has been part and parcel of state government for generations. Like a cancer, it grows year by year, with no one seeking even partial remedies.

The tendency of elected officials to involve only fellow partisans in the search of solutions to terminal problems virtually precludes a satisfactory resolution. Not involving all groups, partisan and non-partisan, elected and unelected, conservative and liberal, are guidelines to certain failure.

Elections seldom create any long-term corrections to societal ills. Franklin Roosevelt sought to reverse the ravages of the Great Depression from 1993 until just before the U.S. went to war in 1941 and failed. Governors have devised plans to bridge the wide gap between Missouri's poor and underdeveloped outstate areas and its affluent suburban neighborhoods and their achievements have been minimal at best.

Your favorite winning candidate, regardless of venue or political faith, may gladden your heart on election day, but referendums and problem-solving are separate and distinctive functions of representative government. It is small wonder so many of us have become so cynical about our democratic system.

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