June 15, 2010 02:52 AM UTC

Hey, Kids, Let's Clean Up Politics!

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• by: NeonNurse

I’m not claiming to be an expert in all things political, but from what I have seen in our lightly populated rural area and read about elsewhere, it can be really hard to find new people to step up and run for office. There are, of course, a lot of reasons for this, but one big one is the average person’s perception that running for office is a dirty business.  The belief that candidates and their families will be instant targets for the mud-slinging brigade means a lot of good people don’t even consider the possibility of running.

Naturally no one admits to being in favor of negative campaigning. But usually when someone wistfully says it would be nice if we could stick to just the issues, as though we were all reasonable adults or something, those who are seasoned politickers wise in the ancient ways of How It’s Done say, “Yeah, well, it sounds good but you Have To Face Reality.”

As everyone who reads the various Colorado blogs already knows, a key plank in Andrew Romanoff’s campaign is that he is not going to take special interest money because it contributes to dirty politics, and that needs to Stop! Right! Now!  Strangely, if anyone suggests that this particular race for Senate might not be the best one to choose as the kick-off for fiscal purity, the response is basically that it’s always a good time to take a moral stand, even if that means you might lose. So in regards to this issue, Reality remains unfaced.

I know someone who used to love to corner people at parties and espouse anarchism as the ideal form of society. No argument could sway him, and his final fallback position was that it would work just fine…all we have to do is change human nature.

I hope I’m not asking for something as radical as that. But I DO think it would be a good idea if the people who are, by their own statements, gung-ho about the cleaning up political fund-raising thing would also get on board with cleaning up the level of discourse.  If you really want to clean things up, why settle for half-measures?