Mixed Messages on Election Day

Opened the mailbox the other day. Unleashed a hip-deep drift of mailers from the Indian gambling guys. Felt like sending up a big smoke signal crying uncle, already, casinos for everyone, just have mercy on our mailman. Realized that would just incite the viva-Las-Vegas side.

Pawed through the pile in search of Official Sample Ballot. Found it under an armload of Pottery Barn catalogs. Remembered that we actually were supposed to be sending a signal this election. Rolled eyes. Buckled down.

Sometimes a vote is only a vote. Not this year. This year the vote is supposed to be a kind of code. Every pinprick in the ballot allegedly carries a double meaning--part public business, part applause meter for some political morality play.

Wondered about this as a secret message: How About You People Just Do Your Jobs? Wondered what ever happened to the grunt work of government, like taking care of schools and health, as opposed to this apparent fixation on saving souls.

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It hasn’t been easy, buckling down for this election. There are real, serious issues, but so much smoke has been blown, it’s seemed simpler just to put things off. The ballot arguments and candidate statements have languished under the junk mail until the last possible minute. You get the sense that, double meanings notwithstanding, everyone understood that, when the air cleared, the answers to most of the issues would suggest themselves.

Well, it’s almost election day, and the smoke has dissipated some, but only enough to induce the big question: Do you go with sending a signal, or focus more on the candidate you’re stuck with after the signal gets sent? And running through it all is the ornery mind-set of the California voter, who, after all, lives 3,000 miles from the people who supposedly need all this signaling. You start to wonder: What does it take to make Washington realize that strong-arm political tactics aren’t how we do morality in this country? What part of this president’s approval rating don’t they understand?

Do we have to vote for every Democrat that isn’t nailed down, even Democrats we don’t know and can’t stand, just to make Newt, Trent & Co. understand that we don’t dig sanctimonious bullies, even when they have a point? Or is it better just to tune out, go insular, concentrate on debates that are closer to home until the dirty politics in D.C. play out?

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This is the quandary. No wonder it wears us out. And it’s not a small deal--behind the smoke, there are serious questions to decide. Maybe they aren’t as sexy as thong underwear in the White House, but they matter to people: What governor to elect in the wake of Pete Wilson. Whom to put in charge of the vast, troubled L.A. County jails in the wake of Sherman Block. The Dornan-Sanchez race in Orange County and all that it means for Latino voters. How to be heard above the lobbyists on matters of education and gun control and health insurance and HMO reform.

Californians, of course, aren’t the only folks who are having a hard time with this election. This is what happens when you cast something as a referendum on Washington, a place that, for most Americans, has come to seem irrelevant and far away. The ugly tantrums of political forces who are more interested in moral control than good governance, the dangerous bickering of extremists, the TV pundits who are such scolds on the overrated emotion of outrage--such things make you wonder how much national “leadership” we need now anyway.

In peace and more or less prosperity, so much of what matters just boils down to reasonably sane public service--making the schools work and keeping the streets safe, filling the potholes, taking care of the needy without giving away the store. Serious work, but perhaps not as alluring as running “revolutions” and letting yourself be seduced in the Oval Office. Work for the kind of people who, it is said, either don’t get into politics or can’t get elected anymore.

Hard to believe that you couldn’t find at least a few people willing to forgo the baloney, people who’d just do the jobs. Hard to believe that they’d have to fake perfection just to get elected by an electorate as imperfect as this one.

Wonder what those people look like, the normal sort of people who’d be good enough in these good-enough times? Wonder what it would take to persuade them to go into government? If we send up a signal, do you suppose they might answer by Tuesday? Quick! Who’s got a match? Let’s push this junk mail into a big pile. . . .

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Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com