The Dirty Campaign

Two weeks from today Americans will vote for their next President with an absence of enthusiasm that can be said to border on indifference. If the opinion polls are right, neither George Bush nor Michael S. Dukakis has come remotely close to inspiring any appreciable number of his fellow citizens. Even this late in the campaign many potential voters say that they don’t know whom to vote for, a portent perhaps that a lot of them won’t bother to vote at all. At the same time there are clear signs that such support as does exist for one man or the other is largely lacking in depth and passion. Some of that is due to the two relatively colorless personalities. A lot more has to do with the deplorable and even contemptible quality of their campaigns.

This has been without doubt the nastiest and most cynical contest for the White House in recent memory, and--worse--the most devoid of substance as well. The nastiness stems from the decisions by strategists to run campaigns that focus on the alleged blunders, naivete and stupidities of the other fellow. Nearly two-thirds of the public, so a recent Gallup poll found, considers this year’s campaign to be “more negative” than any in the past. Both sides are blamed in about equal proportion. The cynicism behind these negative strategies derives from the obvious calculation that voters will be swayed by misrepresentations and lies because they are too stupid or uncaring to know any better.

Even a notably ugly campaign might be partly redeemed if some time were spared to addressthe real issues. Probably no campaign in the 20th Century, however, has done less to illuminate the likely decisions that the next President will be forced to make. After all this time, does anyone really know where Bush and Dukakis stand on the compelling economic, social, national-security and international issues of our time? Shake each campaign by its ankles, and all that falls out are shopworn collections of slogans that dissolve under the most cursory intellectual scrutiny.

And so Bush is all for “values” and saluting the flag and executing drug “kingpins.” Hooray. And so Dukakis favors “competence” and says that he’s tough and believes in “the American dream.” Wow. But what exactly do these so-called positions have to do with offering effective programs to rescue the country from a debt burden that threatens to crush the life out of the economy? Or with salvaging a defense buildup that has seen hundreds of billions of dollars squandered on weapons that don’t work? What do the utterly pointless cliches that we have heard from Bush and Dukakis say about how they will deal with a communist world on the edge of upheaval, or a Middle East once again edging toward confrontation?

No one knows where Bush and Dukakis really stand, in no small measure because both have pretty much avoided exposing themselves to direct questioning on the hard policy issues. Instead, we have seen a campaign marked by increasing viciousness, the latest example being what some see as a primitive appeal to racism by the Bush camp. And we have seen a campaign so devoid of serious debate and discussion as to be an insult not just to the electorate but to the whole democratic process as well. We don’t know who the winner will be on Nov. 8. It’s clear already that the American people are the losers.