BARKER: Politicians, not advertising, are the problem

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”

It has, therefore, been rather distressing for me to see the candidates and their surrogates in the current presidential election hurling charges at each other for “flip flopping.”

I, for one, have absolutely no problem with changing my position if the facts or subsequent developments justify it. If a president happened to be unable to do this, I would judge him or her to be totally unfit for the office.

Of course, both of the candidates are taking their cue from George W. Bush, who used the flip flopping charge quite effectively against John Kerry in the last election. Please don’t get me wrong; my Republican ancestral roots go back to the beginning of the party. However, I really question whether Dubya is necessarily the font from which I wish to draw my intellectual inspiration.

After all, if we never developed new ideas or changed our minds, this country would always operate as if it was being governed by 5-year-old children. Come to think of it, I guess that is pretty much how we have been operating for the last few years.

To get away from boring flip flop charges at the national level, I like to watch Missouri campaign developments. I’ve enjoyed watching Missouri politics for years because they are so much dirtier than the Kansas brand. As the general election day gets closer, the political advertisements will grow increasingly amusing and nasty.

My favorite Missouri primary election this year involved the run of Chris Koster for attorney general. With what was clearly the best prosecutorial resume of the candidates, it appeared early that Koster would coast to an easy victory. However, later in the campaign, dark charges began to be leveled against him involving campaign ethics violations and money laundering. Essentially, the charges were that Koster evaded campaign donation limitations by funneling excessive donations in parcels into shell political action committees. Of course, such things have been standard practice in Missouri for years.

The bizarre twist to this tale is that Koster’s former wife, who had remarried and moved to Arizona, donated $200,000 of her money to Koster’s opponent. Needless to say, the same tactics had to be used in order to evade contribution limits and finance this negative advertising campaign. I can only observe that they must have had quite some divorce.

Koster won the primary election by a cat’s whisker.

Koster’s ex-wife explained that she was not trying to get revenge by making the donation, but merely trying to “level the playing field.” I guess he should be glad that she wasn’t trying to get revenge. It might have gotten really ugly then.

I realize most people claim to dislike negative political advertising, but election results have historically shown voters’ true feelings to be otherwise. My personal theory is that most people secretly like negative political advertising because it tends to validate their own negative opinion of the candidates.

Griping about accurate negative political advertising is like killing the messenger who bears bad tidings. What we really want are better candidates.

There is one drawback to negative news coverage and advertising regarding politicians: It discourages good candidates.

While many of the politicians I’ve known in my life have thick enough hides to disregard the negative publicity, the same cannot necessarily be said for their spouses and other family members. I can say from personal experience that it’s pretty tough for kids and spouses to face the stares and whispering at local restaurants. They don’t get paid for taking such treatment.

A recent case in point involves former presidential candidate John Edwards. After glibly lying about it for a while, Edwards admitted to having an affair with a female staffer. While more will probably come out on this, who is thinking about his wife, who suffers from cancer? Some people even have the nerve to publicly question why she doesn’t divorce him. Perhaps she has financial or health insurance reasons for not doing so. Maybe she even loves him. Nevertheless, it was her decision to forgive him.

That territory does not belong to the National Enquirer or to the American public.

We cannot expect perfection from our political officeholders, but I’m sure we’d like to get a bit closer than we are now. Just try to remember that mankind’s track record for handling even allegedly perfect people is not stellar.

Wendell Barker is a Franklin County resident.