POLITICAL SPIES, WEAK REMARKS

Labor Day marked the more-or-less official beginning of the fall campaign season, though it's difficult for anyone who follows politics to characterize the rhetoric of recent days as a "fresh start." This has been a year of fierce, and often wild, charges and countercharges, few of which add anything to the general knowledge voters need to make a decision this November. One recent accusation in particular has prompted us to do some head-scratching over the state of modern politics.

Last week, the chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party, Gene Bushmann, asserted that state Republicans had planted several of their own within the Ross Perot presidential campaign as "undercover agents." These purported spies, one of whom resides in Cape Girardeau, eventually (and with pre-meditation) stepped forward to renounce Perot and back George Bush.

Bushmann's remarks, made not off-the-cuff but with enough forethought to be included in a press release, were not accompanied by supporting evidence. The notion Perot supporters would work feverishly to get their candidate's name on the state ballot, then toss their support to the president more than 40 days after Perot abandoned the race, all as part of some grand plot to harm Democrats, is a bit hard to swallow.

The state Democratic leader made one statement that rang true: "This is the kind of cheap political behavior that causes Missourians to stay home on election day." Bushmann, however, was talking about the alleged espionage. We believe these words hold true for Bushmann's absurd charges.