Politicians can’t climb
out of the mud pits

AN anniversary passed last week with routine observance of one of the most troubling periods in America's history.

It has been 30 years since Richard Nixon became the first and only president to resign his office, brought down by a bungled burglary at the Watergate apartment-office complex in Washington, D.C.

To this day, it is not clear what Nixon's operatives specifically sought to gain from breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. It was simply another clumsy function of a broad, relentless "win-at-all-cost" scheme to get the president re-elected.

Watergate was probably not the first abuse of presidential powers in order to retain the White House, just one that was exposed. If any voters at the time had not grasped the ferocity with which political campaigns were conducted, Watergate and Nixon's bag of dirty tricks relieved them of their naiveté.

Campaigns are no different today. While candidates test the edges of lawful conduct, they refrain from actually crossing the line, or at least fuzz the boundaries. Ethical courses of action, however, are another matter.

We are hard into the mean season, when anything a candidate says or does is distorted to make her or him appear uncaring or stupid or wicked or weak.

After Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said he'd wage "a more sensitive war on terror," Dick Cheney sneered, as if deliberation and tact have no place in diplomacy. (That may be true in the current administration, which is why we're stuck in Iraq.) In fact, Cheney extracted the phrase from a longer sentence in which Kerry described an intelligent and thoughtful course to counter terrorism through a worldwide effort.

Distortion is a tactic many politicians employ to make their opponents look bad, and local candidates do this as much as the big boys on the national scene. The race for Honolulu mayor has tripped into that gutter.

Brochures sent by Duke Bainum's campaign would lead voters to believe that Mufi Hannemann has broken campaign spending laws. Meanwhile, Hannemann is claiming that Bainum wants to drive farmers off the land because of a bill Bainum authored that changes the way agricultural property is taxed.

Neither is true. Authorities have cleared Hannemann, or at least haven't found his fingerprints on the illegal donations, which his campaign has returned. Bainum isn't trying to hurt farmers; he worked on and approved, along with a City Council majority, the defective bill that has increased assessments for some farmers.

The idea behind these broad-stroked accusations is to paint an ugly picture of the other guy or gal so that a candidate looks better by comparison. How pathetic. What is being offered voters is a choice between the lesser of two evils. It seems that candidates are saying "Hey, I may not be exactly your cup of tea, but pick someone else and you'll be way more sorry."

Another technique is to attempt to create an image through vague words that, when analyzed, really make no sense.

Take the slogan "Our home. Our mayor." What in the world does that mean? Coupling "home," a term that evokes hearth and family -- and maybe "local" as opposed to "mainland" -- with "mayor" is pure blather. It tells voters nothing about the qualifications or the qualities of the candidate.

Then there's "Honest change." That one seems to have been born when political group-thinkers made lists of expressions and joined the two thought to have the most resonance, not noticing that when put together, they become laughable. I mean who would want dishonest change or honest stagnation?

I wish that some candidate somewhere would raise the bar and that voters would respond to straightforward discussions of values and aspirations, that we didn't have to pick the person who is less scary, less corrupt. But that's not compatible with reality. Too bad.