A Four-Way Test For Election Season

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column was published in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, Oregon, September 2006

Judge Candidates Factually, Fairly, On Substance and On Vision

With Labor Day, comes the resumption of campaign season—that time in American life when voters are invited to ponder the state of their nation, state and community.

Interestingly, the period during which we are invited to undertake this political self examination of our system is relatively short. From Labor Day to election day is a mere 65 days—nine weeks and a few days. In Oregon, there are even less days, since ballots typically mail two weeks before election day and voters begin marking them the minute they arrive in the mailbox.

Such a short time frame is in many ways an open invitation to mischief. A favorite tactic of candidates is to level charges and accusations at opponents late in the election season, hoping that there will not be adequate time for the other side to respond. Another “dirty trick” is to save up money and negative campaigning until the days just before the election and then try to bury the other side with bad publicity, knowing full the other side might not have any cash left to defend itself. When voters favor candidates who engage in such shenanigans, they are unfortunately rewarding politicians for their shrewdness in playing the political game and not for their command of the issues and concern for the people they hope to serve.

Like many of us, I wish these weren’t the rules of the political game. Unfortunately, it has always been that way. The only U.S. President to run for re-election without having to face down a mean-spirited, boisterous and at least partial misrepresentation of his record was George Washington, who ran unopposed for a second term.

Since then, it has been all downhill. Thomas Jefferson as vice president, not-so-secretly paid editors to negatively cover his boss, President John Adams. Jefferson himself was subjected to attacks on his unorthodox religious views and his personal morality—subjects which had nothing to do with how he conducted his office. Andrew Jackson’s enemies “Old Hickory” invincible, so they attacked the moral character of his wife and possibly contributed to her early death. Even Abraham Lincoln entered the election of 1864, fighting off accusations that he was a “war-mongerer” who dragged the nation into an immoral conflict where it had no place being and calling upon the sitting President to rectify the situation with an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops.

One of my favorite examples of how history is too frequently forgotten and events get in the way of facts is the fate of the only Oregonian ever to serve in the nation’s highest office. Until he crashed and burned, this Salem native was a “golden child” of the nation. As a young engineer in China when civil war broke out, he put his life on the line to save children and defend a hospital from rebel forces. As head of the Food Administration during World War I, he managed the nation’s food supply to feed two continents: war-ravaged Europe and North American without having to resort to a rationing program. He was promoted after the war to head the American Relief Administration, where he single-handedly organized famine relief for 20 million starving Russian peasants. From 1920 to 1928, he was Secretary of Commerce in two administrations, and in that role he was architect of an economic policy that raised general prosperity and the standard of living for Americans at all levels as incomes rose, prices fell, the work week shrank as leisure time increased and, productivity and corporate profits soared. Once he became President, however, all memory of those achievements vanished as the Great Depression set in and Herbert Hoover, born in Iowa but raised near Salem, Oregon was consigned to the ash heap of history, where he was destined to be reviled by generations of historians as one of the worst U.S. presidents.

As a fellow Oregonian, my sympathies go out to Hoover. Modern historians have been a little kinder than those who chronicled his rise and fall in his own time. But there’s no doubt about it, Hoover provided one of the core tenets of American political science: as voters, we generally are more concerned less with what a candidate has done for us yesterday than what they are willing to promise they will do tomorrow—right after they’re elected.

History suggest that approach gets into some interesting predicaments. Knee-jerk reactions are why we banned blacks from the state in 1857 and followed up with a ban on Japanese property ownership in 1923. And who among us doesn’t positively cringe at the thought that our irrational fears led us as a state between 1917 and 1983 to tolerate the forcible sterilization of 2,650 Oregonians deemed by the State unfit for reproduction by reason of mental or physical defect. As for candidates and elected officials, the last election produced a bumper crop of bums, ranging from a state representative hooked on meth, to a House budget writing chief converting campaign funds to personal use to House and Senate leaders who somehow “overlooked” paying their own property taxes for 13 and 6 years respectively.

Clearly, such gaffes suggestion a little caution might be in order was we approach a raft of ballot measures and some pretty pronounced choices for candidates this November.

I recently read a paper proposing a simple framework for how we ought to evaluate our political options as voters. It suggests listening to candidates and learning about measures with four criteria in mind:

Focus on Facts. Read widely about the impacts, good and bad, of measures. Read all the information printed on the ballot and the arguments in the voters pamphlet. Get both sides from the newspaper. Don’t put your faith in candidates those whose actions don’t quite measure up to their words.

Focus on Fairness. It’s true that for every action there is a reaction. Try to figure out both halves of where a particular proposal will take this state and make an informed choice that provides the greatest good for the greatest number and by choosing the option that inflicts the least amount of harm.

Focus on substance. Your mother had it right when she admonished you that if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. A candidate or political operative who can’t defend his or her proposals on their own merits but rather resorts to personal politics or smear campaigns is someone who hasn’t learned the essential lesson of politics. The job is about building and maintaining relationships within the community and with decision-makers in other adjacent communities, counties, regions and within the state, nation and world. If you can’t be nice to your opponent before you’re elected, you won’t likely be nice to anybody else after you take you’re oath of office.

Focus on the Future. Politics as usual asks, “What’s in it for me?” Politics of a higher calling asks the question, “What’s in it for future generations?” Look for politicians who stake out the high ground.

These four tests are or should be at the heart of every political deliberation. Our political system doesn’t work perfectly, but it’s the best the world has yet to invent, and its genius is that it is constantly undergoing revision. This November would be a great time to start making some changes in our own approach.