Use news, not news excerpts, when you vote
Who is going to determine how you perceive the candidates you support in the coming election? You? Or the candidates?
There is hardly mystery surrounding the power of political advertising, especially negative political advertising, in election campaigns. But it still is sobering to watch the process play out and to realize that it works so well precisely because it is based on the premise that you, the voter, won't pay close enough attention to get all the facts. Consider, for example, current negative flare-ups in campaigns for governor and for U.S. senator from Illinois.
The controversy over Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk's misstatements about his military service has its origins - aside from the misstatements themselves - in a story fed to The Washington Post by Kirk's Democratic opponent, Alexi Giannoulias, likely in response to the heat he was enduring about his family's banking history. And, Kirk's response? Was it to admit that it was wrong and boastful to abuse his military record for political purposes? No. While he eventually came to that conclusion when he realized it was politically expedient, his initial reaction was simply to shoot back at Giannoulias' bank problems.
Fortunately, conscientious readers have newspapers to sort through all this, but if you pay attention merely to the candidates' advertising or their political statements, you get a starkly one-sided perspective.
The race for Illinois governor is offering a similar battle to win the high ground by lowering the low ground. Daily Herald staff writer Timothy Magaw noticed near the end of May that Republican gubernatorial candidate and state Sen. Bill Brady seemed to be absent a lot, at a time when a flurry of activity was taking place in the Senate. So, Magaw looked at the record and, lo and behold, it showed Brady had missed a couple hundred votes. It was a natural story, and in writing it Magaw took the additional step of pointing out that Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn had taken some criticism himself for not being as involved as he could have been.
Brady quickly responded by promising to return meal and hotel allowances for the days on which he didn't vote. The Daily Herald wrote a forceful editorial stating that that's the least he should do and noting that the whole practice of avoiding one's actual job - voting on legislation - is rampant in politics, with 2008 presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and then-Sen. Barack Obama as Exhibits A and B.
Still, the Brady headline was all Democrats needed on which to build a Quinn campaign commercial dramatizing Brady's absences and throwing in the Daily Herald editorial for good measure. Never mind that they overlooked the editorial's inclusion of the most prominent Democrat in the nation as part of the problem. Never mind, as Magaw reported on Wednesday, that the empty desk they used to suggest Senator Brady's vacant seat was actually that of another lawmaker in the House. Never mind the question of Quinn's own scarcity at times during the legislative session.
It's all fodder for an enraged missive on the sad state of negative campaigning, but I bring it up here not for that purpose but to emphasize that there is a place where you can get a more-balanced look at the whole story when negative issues arise during a campaign: the local newspaper.
When it comes to casting your vote in November, campaign ads and negative claims may get your attention, but if you want to be confident your vote is your own and not some candidate's manipulation of your good intentions, don't settle for excerpts from the news. Remember the deeper story.
jslusher@dailyherald.com