Nintzel, He Teases Me…

This week in Tucson Weekly’s The Skinny, Jimmy Nintzel did me the solid of an extended quote. But at the same time he brained me for holding an inconsistent position.

"Still, most lefties remain in denial that Clean Elections is turning
into a disaster for the left. Take blogger Michael Bryan, who normally
writes insightful posts at Blog for Arizona, arizona.typepad.com. On Election Day, Bryan urged people to "vote clean.""

He goes on to quote me bemoaning the loss of several moderate Rebublicans with traditional financing to Right Wing idiots who used Clean Elections. Some have clamoured for a retort. I’m of the opinion that any press is good press, but Jim does point out a useful issue, so…

Mea Culpa. Those positions are superficially inconsistent.

But recall the words of the American Sage, Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Despite the admitted fact that Clean Elections has empowered the right end of the political spectrum more than any other group, I still support the idea. There is a principle behind Clean Elections that deserves support regardless of it’s immediate and unintended effects: special interest money is far more corrupting to our political system that the views of wackos who may get the electorate to agree with them, but would not be able to get big donors to give them money.

It doesn’t improve democracy for candidates to conform their views to the wealthy and powerful in order to obtain funding to run for office. Those views amenable to big money donors are not automatically desirable in our political system. Most damaging to our political culture, which we’ve seen run rampant in our national politics, is forcing candidates to conform to such pro-business/pro-wealth views as a qualification, or litmus test, to run for office. This is what Nintzel apparently thinks is a superior political cuture. We can’t know what the ultimate effect of Clean Elections might be, but it stands a good chance of being much more reflective of a broad range of views than the privately financed system.

Nintzel is skeptical about Clean Elections, and rightly so; nothing is perfect and Clean Elections may need some tinkering. But the central goal of Clean Elections, to unhitch our political bandwagon from private money, is a valid and ongoing project.

Obviously, Clean Elections is not perfect, but its imprefections are only a mirror held up to the imperfections of our electorate and our political culture. Clean Elections is not the problem; we are.

A nation’s, or a state’s politics are not static cultures. They change vastly over time and things which were possible or impossible in one time and place, swtich places in another. Clean Elections adds to the developement our political culture by injecting new views and ideas into the mainstream that could not otherwise be there, or could not be heard widely.

Right now, Clean Elections is letting, as old King Log said, all the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out. I say, get the crazy out there. Let the people experience what these morons do with the government. Only then can we purge their racist, nativist, militarist, fascist, do-nothing, elitist, anti-government, corrupt bullshit from our political dialog.

Perhaps people will find that it is in their interest to vote: in both primary and general elections, in Presidential elections and mid-terms. Our electoral participation is the among the lowest of any democracy. Perhaps people will get so fed up they’ll get more involved. Clean Elections gives us possibilities; the system of private finance offers nothing but more of the same.

These wacky right wing people are winning elections, so there’s obviously a market for their crazy in the electorate. This phase of the political evolution ushered in by Clean Elections is painful, but neccessary, and ultimately heathy. We will know when we’ve arrived at a new level of political maturity when it doesn’t matter if a John Bircher can get Clean Elections funding, because he sill won’t get elected.

So, would I want people to vote for crazies solely because they are Clean Elections candidates? Hell, no. And to the extent I gave that impression, I’m an idiot. I want people to chose Clean candidates who represent them.

So, I’ll restate my primary day exhortation more accurately, "Vote Clean! But don’t be an idiot about it and take this suggestion as an instruction to vote an idiot!"