“With one Election Day in the rearview mirror, it should be long past time to get to the people’s business in Washington.  The agenda for the American people is threatened from an unlikely quarter this year, however: the political process.

 

There are a lot of adages in our nation’s capital, and these two are true: Politics and policy can be opposing forces, and just as soon as one election ends, another begins.

 

Some pundits have asserted in recent days that this Congress will have as few as five months to complete meaningful work on policy before the politics of a 2008 presidential election take over. Already, hopeful candidates are raising money in their prospective run for the White House. Soon, the speculating on television shows and the news stories will begin, and before long, caucuses and primaries will be underway.  I don’t mind this part of the process: it can be exciting to see a good candidate with new ideas and strong values rise above the fray to get noticed.  A national political debate about issues is fundamental to the process our Founders envisioned.

 

What our Founders did not envision, on the other hand, was the onslaught of media, the glut of negative commercials, the mudslinging and the rumormongering that have unfortunately become central to the way our body politic selects its leaders.  That part of the process is a tiresome disappointment.  It is no way to select a leader, and sometimes, this way of conducting campaigns leaves voters with an impossible choice in which we don’t really feel strongly about voting FOR a candidate because we do feel so strongly about voting AGAINST the opponent.

 

The new Congress must explore ways to return the political process to its more altruistic roots. Expanding public financing of presidential campaigns, clearly defining campaign seasons, and increasing transparency are all central tenets of proposed reform.

 

Watching presidential candidates navigate a national political campaign will be interesting, and hopefully uplifting.  There will be real issues to discuss about now-common campaign practices, such as independent expenditures, as well as the overall direction in which our nation is heading.

 

I’m not foolhardy enough to think that candidates for office won’t find loopholes in the rules, no matter how stringent the rules seem.  At the very least, however, our political process must embrace transparency, so the Americans contributing to third-party organizations which involve themselves in campaigns can be made public.  It is essential that those responsible for negative, misleading, or even incorrect advertisements are accountable for their public statements. Anonymity has no place in discussions of the guiding principles of political campaigns.

 

At the end of the day, we must replace the negativity of election-season messages with positive messages that represent the candidates on the ticket.

 

Our American political process may have passed its Golden Age, but there is no reason we cannot return to a values-driven, honest discussion of why an individual American should be selected to represent all Americans, regardless of age, race, creed, economic status, or even if we vote.  In this new year, I hope we can look forward to a new kind of election.”