Politicians Are Hired Help, Like a Gardener

Negative campaigns guarantee that potential statesmen and voters are the real losers. But you haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until 1996.

Negative campaigns get so much attention, they appear to work. And until the voters look past things like “Nannygate” and focus on the real issues, the airways will be polluted with them.

Voters have to get past the idea that personality is more important than how the candidate will vote. Folks, I don’t care how a candidate handles his or her personal life. He or she can be sexually indiscreet, an alcoholic, bad driver, physically ugly or extremely obnoxious. I’m not hiring a runway model or a role model. I want a hired gun to vote the way I want: less government control, thank you very much.

In my never-to-be-humble opinion, voters should focus on what direction a candidate will move the government. This must take precedence over what personal devils haunt them. The pols are not invited to family dinner or hired to read stories to our children. Think of our representatives as gardeners we have hired to maintain our landscapes to our specifications. Failure to perform as agreed results in termination.

Only if we demand and enforce this kind of contract will negative campaigning stop, and more normal people run for public office. By the way, normal people aren’t perfect, and if they have any common sense they won’t subject themselves and their families to having every mistake they ever made exaggerated out of all proportion and spread over every conceivable media surface.

Positive campaigning could drop spending to a point that normal people could afford to run for office. I don’t know about you, but I am really dreading another election where I have to choose from a field of arrogant attorneys, oddball millionaires, their wives, or some twisted politicians.

JIM RICHMAN, Woodland Hills. Richman is a former member of the Burbank City Council.