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The focus-group hot-button spin experts hit upon a
wonderful buzzword for the '96 campaigns: values.
They've succeeded so well that you can't watch TV for more
than five minutes without hearing about how someone will
protect our values,
how she shares our values
or how he will represent our values.
My first thought was that this is unadulterated poppycock. If you've got an IQ even close to the double digits, you vote for a candidate who advances your interests, not your values.
This reminds me of a late-night college conversation years ago. At the time, getting arrested was almost as easy as it is today, and the question of legal representation arose.
Most participants in this beer-fueled conversation said
they'd want an attorney who shared our values
--
some shaggy movement type in tie-dyed t-shirt, patched blue
jeans and tire-tread sandals.
I argued that if I should need an attorney, I'd want a silver-tongued fixer who lived in a mansion, drove a Mercedes and was reputed to be the biggest crook in six counties. The goal is to beat the rap, not to make a political statement, I argued.
In other words, when you need representation, get somebody to represent your interests, rather than your values. Our judicial and political systems are set up to deal with interests, not values.
Further, the GOP ran hard on family values
in
1992 and got beaten like a gong. That should have been a
message, rather than an inducement to try again, but now
both parties are after the value vote.
In state and local races, some candidates promise to
advocate Colorado values.
Colorado exists on land
acquired by military conquest and numerous treaty
violations. Our cities represent a century and more of
real-estate speculation and development.
Most of those years, the state government has been a willing tool of major-league corporate interests, ranging from railroads to the Rockefellers. Along the way, we've been pretty good at exterminating critters, dewatering valleys and dispersing toxins.
The process of advancing traditional Colorado
values
-- i.e., greed, exploitation and hypocrisy --
continues no matter who gets into office. So why does
anyone even try to make an issue of it? It's like promising
that the sun will continue to rise in the east.
To put this another way, any Colorado candidate who
believed in promoting middle class values
like hard
work and delayed gratification would be stumping hard
against the state lottery, which spends millions every year
promoting instant gratification without work.
Look at the national races, and we find more
values,
especially of the family variety.
Anyone who runs for president spends at least two years
on the road, mostly in the company of ward-heelers,
bag-men, fixers, consultants, contributors and other people
who are not prominent in The Book of Virtues.
Anybody who cared enough about his family to stay home and help with the homework and housework would be a candidate we never heard of.
So we can scratch any presidential candidate as a
practitioner of family values.
They might be able to
advance family interests
with changes in tax codes,
employment regulations, educational standards, etc.
But values? If they sincerely believed in family values, they'd be at home, not at a staged event on an airport tarmac.
Not that they don't keep trying, though. They even put the family to work.
Libby Dole gets tiresome quickly with those explanations about how her dear hubby is from the Heartland, where those wholesome folks care plenty about keeping your word and other high values.
But she's his second wife. When he took vows on June 12, 1948, about staying with Phyllis Holden until death did them part, did that count? If his word didn't mean anything when he stood before a minister, why does it mean anything anywhere else?
And he's going to deliver on a 15 percent tax cut? The constitution gives all authority for such legislation to the House of Representatives, not the president. Newt Gingrich might be able to campaign credibly on a tax cut, but since his negative ratings are even higher than those of Hillary Clinton or Saddam Hussein, he's been invisible.
The weirdest thing in all of this is that in survey
after survey, politicians rank somewhere around used-car
salesmen, journalists, computer software companies and
attorneys in the most untrustworthy
category.
In other words, these are people who, in public
estimation at least, have no values worth mention. We know
better than to trust any of them, and we don't expect them
to represent values.
But the charade goes on.
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