Campaigns of Feinstein and Van de Kamp

Does the same little clique of amoral creeps work out campaign strategies for all candidates? Or do they make their own stupid mistakes?

The main strategy appears to be: Examine every aspect of your opponent’s professional and personal life, find a weak spot, thrust.

Here’s Dianne Feinstein, blessed with a face that inspires confidence, a voice that suggests calm and competence, a mind capable of using those tools well, a record of leading a troubled city at least partway out of its problems. All she had to do was take the high road, tell the voters what she expected to do for California, describe in broad terms how she expected to accomplish her goals.

Instead, she thrust at John Van de Kamp with the claim that he can’t really enforce the death penalty because personally he disproves of it. (His record shows he can.) If he had his way, the Hillside Strangler would be on the streets today. (An absurd conclusion.)

Here’s John Van de Kamp, a decent man, a competent, dedicated law-enforcement officer with a strong record as attorney general, an articulate speaker--a tad short on charisma, but a man of honor. He had a problem bucking an imaginative, appealing candidate, but she gave him an opening by choosing the low road. All he had to do was take the high road.

Instead, he found that a bookkeeping device in Feinstein’s San Francisco could be construed (if one didn’t have all the facts) as a deficit. Thrust.

Now we know they’re both demagogues. All Pete Wilson has to do is take the high road. Of course he won’t.

There’s a campaign strategy that is absolutely compelling, and it hasn’t been used in years: straightforward honesty.

HARRISON STEPHENS

Claremont