Mourning becomes election

Such a great day in America! The greatest day to be an American!

For today we Americans, young and old, of every creed and origin, stood out on our American doorsteps, sucked in the crisp fall American air, scanned the landscape of American-made America and declared:

"No more effing campaign commercials!!" The shouts of uplifting relief rang from sea to shining sea.

Also, an election took place — far, far less important.

Now we enjoy a reprieve of almost six months, during which we won't be told how stupid we are by the people who want to represent us in our houses of legislature. Whatever "represent" and "legislature" even mean anymore. The same for "democracy."

Tomorrow where I live, one of two people will represent me in Congress. It'll either be Democratic incumbent Ami Bera, a doctor who unseated Republican Dan Lungen last election, or Republican Doug Ose, a land developer who served previously as a representative in a nearby California district.

I keep being told it's an important race to politics nationwide, though I'm not sure why, unless you count its expense, the costliest House race in the country. If so, here was a chance for the candidates to run on their records, to answer why I should vote for him.

But no.

It's the same old juvenile dreck that passes for a campaign anymore, salient parody if weren't so sad and real.

The Sacramento Bee's editorial cartoonist Jack Ohman spoke my wishes eloquently, and good on The Bee for giving him
nearly  a half page in the Sunday opinion section to say it. What an election this might have been had we
lived in that parallel universe.

It began with a tiny sliver of hope, as all campaigns do, with the happy music and the candidate serving you, his constituent. Physician Bera is treating patients, smiles all around. Ose is walking through warehouses with hardhatted warehouse supervisors, surveying progress happening in your district! Ose's commercial is strangely notable for his sporting three different hairstyles in a 30-second span.

They're going to Washington to fight for you, citizen, and won't answer to the special interests.

That phase goes fast, because name recognition is high in this region, or because positive advertising doesn't pay.

Soon the dreck appeared, dreck upon dreck. They drecked the halls with their folly, following the same cookie-cutter formula: Show the opponent in grainy black and white, in some still from a video screen grab that catches him with eyes half closed or mouth twisted in a chewing motion so he looks locked in an apoplectic fit.

Accuse the opponent of something that might technically be a lie, but nobody's going to read the fact-checking article in the next day's newspaper, and by that time the candidate has launched another half-baked broadside.

Then show the candidate in color with happy music, signaling the end of the ebola and economic and moral bankruptcy the opponent would bring.

The attack ads are the same in every district and precinct in the country. Republicans label their Democratic opponents as slavish devotees of President Obama and reps. Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer and lovers of Obamacare. Democrats, lacking a lame-duck president on which to hang blame, resort to images of airliners and glasses of champagne and stacks of money, and accuse opponents of jetsetting on the public dime.

Neither candidate blames bankers, careful not to bite feeding hands.

The commercials appeared back to back on TV last week, with such speed that Bera seemed to be attacking Bera as Ose throttled Ose.

It didn't need to be this way. I bet it would have been enough for Bera to be Bera. He was dean of admissions at the UC Davis Medical Center, and Sacramento County's chief medical officer. Impressive on its face.

As a real estate developer, Ose could have stood on his standing in the community.



I bet if they bucked the unfortunate trend and told us what they would do for us — with us — rather than lie about what the other guy wouldn't do for us — or would do to us — the election would be light years better.

Why they'd want to run, I have no idea.

Politics these days just seems like another job though, the way it goes now. One currency is the the vote, the ticket into office. The other currency is what comes from the constituency in power, the special interests that guide offices and campaigns and frame policy.

Candidates can act like we're stupid because we only count to get them in office. Once there, we are not needed until the next mid-term.

I wrote both candidates telling them I was ashamed by the way they handled their campaigns. I'm sure a staffer looked at the envelope through hard light, didn't see any money, and threw it away. Or the staffer opened it, and gathered other staffers around for a lighthearted moment from one of the babe-in-the-wood constituents, who thought he really mattered.

No matter. Fight the fear. You may still have time to vote.

Five stages of "Good grief!"

Shame on two men today.

(Not those two, not Romney or Obama, though they could take heed.)

Today two men should feel properly hung over, as if awakened from a stupor, having let their baser Mr. Hydes overtake their Dr. Jekylls, with disgusting result.

Two decent men, I'll wager, became less in their attempt to be more.

Two who would not ordinarily act as they did the last two months, and would not have drawn their friends and families and co-workers into shame on their behalf.

Except this, they decided, was an extraordinary time, and shame, they decided, had use.

Tomorrow one of these two men may wonder if he could have managed without acting like such an ass. He will be declared the winner. The other may wonder if he should have — and somehow could have — been more of an ass. He will be the loser.

We lose, either way.

In the spirit of Tip O'Neill's "all politics is local," I confine my rant to the race for my assembly district.

The Republican candidate is Peter Tateishi, as close as I've ever been to knowing a real-life politician. He and his siblings went to the same school my kids did. His mom teaches at the school. His dad is a deacon in the church.

I don't know him personally; I have surmised from the literature that he has sought a political life — maybe even, you might say, a life of public service. He runs on his experience as chief of staff for Rep. Dan Lungren, our congressman, himself having run a shame-for-shame campaign with his opponent Ami Bera.

Peter came to our doorstep one day, canvassing the neighborhood, also a first; I've never seen a candidate show up at our door. Just him, with his satchel of pamphlets, surprised I recognized him.
His red-white-and-blue signs had covered the intersections long before. "Peter Tateishi … To Fix the State Assembly." Quixotic and awkward: Does any voter really expect one representative to clean up an entire legislative house? Tip O'Neill would have told Tateishi the slogan should be, "To Fix our Potholes."

Peter Tateishi's career has included serving as a planning commissioner, a parks and recreation district commissioner, a president of a state group of parks and rec commissioners, and creator and CEO of a foundation to support parks in his community.

In other words, he's doing something, trying to make a difference, to lead the way, not relying on the public weal. An honorable person, I'm willing to guess.

As is his opponent. Ken Cooley is a city council member from Rancho Cordova, has been since the new city was incorporated, was mayor twice. Outsider news media might call Rancho Cordova a hardscrabble city, with an equal share of mini-marts and massive corporate headquarters, never the twain meeting. Crime and blight, outsiders may first think of Rancho Cordova. Ken Cooley lives there and has been walking his talk to make his community better.

Here are two candidates who present a tough choice, two candidates who could have — should have — run on their records and left it at that.  But of course, politics must be usual.

The campaign has run a cycle, a kind of reverse interactive Kübler-Ross five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance).

We started with acceptance, as each candidate presented himself, stated his qualifications and achievements, with solid street cred and just enough bunting on their campaign literature.

Then commenced the anger, with a trickle of accusations that arrived in our mail. They're running for office, after all. Being good, making a difference, is not enough. The other guy must be evil.

The endorsement groups — firefighters, police officers, teachers, nurses, the League of Women Voters — began bargaining with us over the candidates. If you're one of us — if you want us patrolling your neighborhood, teaching your kid — vote for our guy.

We became depressed. We accepted the deluge of mail that our postal deliverer actually complained about having to bring us. With a smattering of "I'm the good guy" came mailers mostly with variations on "He's the bad guy!!!" Charges of corruption, of dark connections, of trojan horses disguising wicked agendas; multiple mailers from each candidate, every day but Sunday.

"He's Dan Lungren's chief minion!"

"Oh yeah, well he's the insurance industry's henchman!"

"I balanced 10 straight budgets. He only improved a local skate park."

"He gave away pensions and went on trips at taxpayer expense!"

"He'll raise your taxes!!"

"Lobbyist!"

"Lackey!"

And so forth. My favorite moment so far was last week, listening to a radio commercial featuring Peter Tateishi's wife, who outlined her two tours of duty in Iraq training police —a family embodying public service! — and then deplores Ken Cooley's hurtful lies and accusations against her husband.

Simultaneously came the Tateishi fliers, proffering their own lies and accusations.

(Second favorite: An anti-Cooley flier with a connect-the-dots line-art portrait of Cooley, the dots representing the increments of donations "Big Insurance" has made to Cooley's campaign. Unlike the postcards, this flier is folded an closed with two stickers. That's asking a lot of the people who applied the stickers, and a lot of voters to work so hard to be insulted.)

Neither of these candidates is the scum the other has suggested. Each is doing far more for their communities than I and most others. But they fell into the mucky pit of politics, or someone pulled them in, because that's how it's done.

How I wish these two — or someone! — would start the trend: I'm running on my record and I'm not denigrating my opponent. Vote for me if you think I can do job.

Candidates need to run ads like this, the world I want to live in come every election time.

Instead, candidates show they don't think much of their constituents' intelligence.

Shame on these two. Shame on us.