Stop feeding the beast!

Ah, it comes with great regularity. The chill in the air. The colorful change in landscape. The excitement for the day to come and the relief when it is finally over. No, I'm not talking about autumn. I'm talking about the election cycle.

I live in Wisconsin and, in case you don't know, we are in the middle of a contentious race for governor. Truth is, every person in every race on the ballot next week has supporters and detractors. And all of them are promising that their candidate will fix all that is wrong with our state. Theories abound. Mud is slung. Polls are taken. And we still don't know who is going to win next week.

And it is those polls I want to talk about for a moment. Most folks I know are tired of the mud-slinging, sound-bite-driven TV commercials that characterize elections. We all long for a candidate that simply says this is what I propose and this why. Oh! How I long for a civil debate that passionately advocates a position without reference to the opposition. But the numbers say that I am in the minority. You see, the reason political campaigns have become so dirty is because those are the kinds of ads that change the numbers in the polls. Run a positive ad for a candidate and you won't see a significant bump in the numbers of people who would vote for them. Run a smear campaign and watch the opponents numbers drop. We might not want to admit it, but the polls say smears and mud-slinging are more successful than advocating a position on anything. So, negative ads increase the numbers in the polls and, thus, we have more negative ads.

I would like to propose a solution to this problem. STOP FEEDING THE BEAST! Call me a hopeless optimist, but if every citizen would decline to answer the polls when they call, there would be no numbers to base this stuff on. There would be no more red states or blue states. If we starve the polls to death, it would change the way elections are run. Because, today, elections are all about the polls. No polls? How do you run a campaign? Perhaps you just advocate your position and the citizens decide which position they would rather have.

This solution might have an ancillary benefit also, the death of the two-party controlled political system. It would eliminate the lock-step obedience to a political party. It might even allow some true patriots (aka, no one who is currently in office) to want to serve. You see, if there are no polls, there is no "food" for the next election cycle. No polls and it doesn't matter if you may be re-elected or not. You serve, not to be high in polling, but to passionately advance a position that is right, regardless of the political outcome.

I guess I'm dreaming. This will never happen, because we actually don't want real change. What we want is for the government to give us our own way. And as long as I get my way, no one else matters. Not a kind thing to say. And certainly not a Christian way of thinking. Philippians 2:3 - Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. (ESV)