MISSOURI WATCH: THE GREAT CAMPAIGN ILLUSION

When the 1996 campaign really got under way following this summer's primary elections, I decided to save every mailed, expressed and faxed press release from state, congressional and presidential candidates. I was not trying to determine how many rolls of facsimile paper were consumed, although if you are interested the number was 11, nor which candidate issued the most press releases.

The public information quantity of this year's 1996 campaign was, for all purposes, considerably greater than the campaigns of either 1992 or 1994. Much of the information I received during the campaign came by way of the fax machine, and I expect this was the case for every media office. Just for the heck of it, I divided the information into three categories: opponent-hate releases, candidate scheduling information and public policy statements.

Since campaigns are supposed to be about informing the electorate, helping voters make up their minds about the candidates and an opportunity to offer new ideas on how to govern Missouri or America, it is instructive to study how the press releases to my office break down among the categories:

Opponent-hate releases: 22 percent.

Candidate scheduling information: 47 percent

Public policy statements: 18 percent

For the mathematicians in the audience who have already computed that the above figures don't total 100 percent, let me note that some of the information the candidates faxed either dealt with none of the above categories or were so equally divided between trashing the opponent and offering solutions that it was impossible to categorize them.

The important point to note, however, is that the leading category---candidate scheduling information--- constituted the principal topic of virtually all state and federal campaign information. In other words, most political information officers were more concerned about where their candidate was going to speak or where they had spoken than where they stood on the issues, if any could even be observed.

Most of us would agree that within our own state, the principal problems facing citizens include such subjects as improving education, reforming welfare and how to deal with crime and criminals. There are other challenges, of course, but not a few of them are peripheral issues to the three major ones listed above. One would presume, although as it turns out, quite foolishly, that at least a majority of the candidates for the five statewide offices that were being contested would include at least one of these major issues in the 18 percent of their news releases that included public policy positions.

A tabulation of policy statements from the 10 persons from the two major parties who were seeking to lead the state for the next four years will cause you to change your presumption. Want to guess what percentage of the 18 percent policy statements dealt with the three major problems facing Missouri.

Exactly 24 percent.

Except in the two open congressional contests, the issue neglect of candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives was even worse than for state candidates. Nearly 60 percent of the news releases in seven congressional races were devoted to trashing the opponent, whether incumbent or challenger. I suppose one can assume, without too much danger of contradiction, that candidates for the highest legislative body in the nation were more interested in politics-as-usual than resolving-national-concerns. But, then, who could be surprised, given the long history of equivocation in the District of Columbia.

It would have seemed appropriate for the two major candidates for governor to discuss some issue other than the sins of his/her opponent and to lay out proposals for correcting educational inadequacies or future directions of welfare programs or unique avenues to be taken to reduce crime and deal with a myriad of related problems in this area. They seldom did.

The founding fathers were not keen on laying out rules for political campaigns, with little reference even made to them in the enabling legislation that followed constitutional ratification. Virtually all of the rules of campaigns have been made as problems have arisen, and most were designed to correct some flaw in the process. The point is that campaigns at both the state and federal levels are governed by laws that were-based on expediency rather than framed with the single purpose of informing the electorate, which after all foots the total cost of both campaigns and elections.

Today's campaigns, utilizing modern communications means, are a different bag than even a generation ago. Candidates formerly sought votes by addressing constituent concerns, and while some of the promises designed to gain votes were clearly ludicrous and even dishonest, voters were generally able to separate the wheat from the chaff, the truly dedicated from the partisan windbags.

The close association between candidate and electorate ended with paid television commercials, a 30-second opportunity to trash the opposition and offer quickie solutions that, given proper study and thought, usually don't wash. Never mind. The public is sick of the whole process, as witness the lethargic response to this year's multi billion-dollar effort.

What was amusing after the most recent voting was to hear the cries of defeated candidates who claimed their messages didn't get through to the electorate and that all efforts to discuss the issues were ignored by the opposition. The messages got through all right, and the candidates surely got their meaning:

Voters are sick to death of the campaign process that considers the ambitions of the candidates ahead of the needs of the public. Not a single media release in the Campaign of 1996 made mention of this problem. Nobody is surprised by that.

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