Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Steven Farnham, a resident of Plainfield.
If you haven’t read Rick Hubbard’s “Vermonters join the New Hampshire Rebellion,” posted at VTDigger on Jan. 30, then I encourage you do so. In his commentary, he describes the corrupting effect money has on elections, and adds his voice to the choir that is attempting to win support for publicly funded political campaigns. If you’re among the 96 percent he alleges agree with him, then please allow me to point out a bit of inconvenient truth.
Let me first say that I appreciate the fire burning in Mr. Hubbard’s belly, and that I support the basic premise of his spirit – we must do something. I am uncertain how a walk the entire length of New Hampshire amounts to a rebellion, but hey – whatever wears out your Keds, and burns adipose deposits from your keister. However, no matter how well Mr. Hubbard stated the problem, I vehemently disagree with his solution.
Have you seen what passes for political campaigns in the past 20 years? There are virtually no actual debates between/among candidates, they never discuss important issues, and they smother us with meaningless slogans like “Let’s move America forward.” Forward to what? If what has been going on since the first time I heard that phrase is indeed, forward, then I think we better try “backward” or “sideways” for a while. Inevitably, the successful candidate is the one who can cast the most aspersions on his opponent and get away with it.
So you want to suffer and endure this perennial road show of prevarication, chicanery and balderdash … and pay for it too?
Oy vey!
As far as I can see, if a candidate claims that he is going to boil up a caldron full of hen’s teeth, eye of newt and lizards’ brains, and that the steam emanating therefrom will waft to the sky and cause dollar bills to rain from the heavens, then not only are his promises as credible as many others I’ve heard from mainstream political candidates, but also it’s news.
Did you read Andrew Schoerke’s Jan. 30 VTDigger commentary, “The war on the poor“? Given what he reported, exactly where, in our budget, can we afford to pay for the campaign season tomfoolery and trumpery that has become standard fare every election?
I have a real solution: Treat campaigns as news — if for no other reason than that’s what campaigns are – and prohibit the media from accepting money to broadcast political advertising (or lying) in any form.
Suppose Gov. Christie wants to buy an advertising campaign in which he promotes himself as a fair, decent, ethical, benevolent and effective politician, whilst simultaneously lambasting and pillorying his critics, opponents and those investigating his administration’s shenanigans. Would the media broadcast such a campaign? Probably — but so far, I haven’t seen it. Let us hope that this does not happen, and let’s hope that it is because the media has not become completely unhinged from all moral and ethical guideposts.
If a scandal affecting a single politician, like the one currently shaking down the Christie administration, is news the media considers worthy of broadcast to the public — then so are the campaigns of individual politicians leading up to an election. As far as I can see, if a candidate claims that he is going to boil up a caldron full of hen’s teeth, eye of newt and lizards’ brains, and that the steam emanating therefrom will waft to the sky and cause dollar bills to rain from the heavens, then not only are his promises as credible as many others I’ve heard from mainstream political candidates, but also it’s news.
However, as soon as the law requires that news about political campaigns be moved off the revenue side of the media’s ledger, and onto the production side, you’ll see the media rapidly lose its appetite to broadcast morally indefensible grandiloquence, and absurd promises of the highly improbable, because it costs too much to be bothered with it.
The media might even rediscover that piece of anatomy they stuffed in the closet about a half-century ago – something the rest of us call a backbone – and begin asking the tough questions that candidates for political office must to be required to answer.
That, my friend, is real reform.
However, if your idea of reform is making us pay to be fire-hosed with the usual buncombe and claptrap the candidates visit upon the public every election season, then I am afraid I cannot support your endeavors. I do not want to pay a red cent for any of it, and I’ll bet, if they stop to think for a moment, most of Mr. Hubbard’s “96 percent” won’t want to pay for any of it either.
