‘My Opponent Is An Evil Piece of ...’

Whenever I'm at home on Sunday morning (and too often with my job, I'm not), one of the simple pleasures of my week for more than 30 years has been to rise without an alarm, to throw on jeans, sweats or a bathrobe (depending on how late I awaken), and to fix a pot of coffee and toast a bagel while switching on the CBS program Sunday Morning.

Hosted from 1979 to 1994 by the late Charles Kuralt, and ever since then by Charles Osgood, it's always been an amalgam of interesting features, some with a recent-news peg, some not, but always done at a leisurely pace that acknowledges the intelligence of its audience.

However, my increasing problem with the Sunday Morning program in recent years has been the fact that its audience research undoubtedly shows that its viewers register and vote in significantly higher percentages than the general population. And so during election years, basically from Labor Day through the Sunday before Election Day (which is when I'm writing this), the program's advertising breaks are dominated by political spots.

This week, on Halloween Sunday 2010, I don't believe (though I wasn't taking notes) that there was a single NON-political ad during the program's entire 90 minutes. And unlike the show's programming, the great bulk of these ad spots insulted, not acknowledged, the viewer's intelligence. Because the overwhelmingly majority carried the basic thrust (as characterized by Dr. Art Stern, an old Geneva High classmate of both Rick Nagel's and mine) as follows:

"Let's cut to the chase: my opponent is an evil piece of excrement."

(Since this isn't The New Yorker, Rick makes me clean up that last word of Art's characterization, lengthening it beyond its original four letters. I think you probably know what he's saying.)  

Political television advertising has grown more objectionable for at least the last couple of decades. But I swear that this season has reached new lows in stridency, distortion, and above all, negativity.

One of the biggest local offenders this fall with advertising-in-the-gutter has frankly surprised me: our own Congressman Bill Foster (D), whose balding, bespectacled, open-faced portrait, you'd think, could be printed alongside the Webster dictionary definition for "decent" or "mild-mannered." Whether or not you agree with his positions on public policy (and let me state clearly that I do not in many areas), Foster looks like a guy who would insist that his campaign's advertising aim at the intellect and not the gut (or lower).

But looks evidently are deceiving. The ham-handed distortions by Foster's campaign about Republican candidate Randy Hultgren (and yes, I include the stuff that's been spewing from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as well; I'm sorry, if Foster truly objected to it he could put a stop to it) have been breathtaking.

For several weeks Foster & Co. have been trying to see if they could get any, uh, excrement to stick to Hultgren for the way he earned a living through his financial-services company, that he "sold high-risk mortgage products that fueled the housing crisis." Even if he did (which he didn't), so what? It would have involved Hultgren earning a living for his family by marketing products and services that were legal.

Most recently, though, has come the most outrageous distortion of all—the ludicrous charge that Hultgren, a fiscally conservative Republican, favors a 23 percent national sales tax on top of all existing taxes, and closing with the line that Hultgren is "NOT FOR YOU."

The 23 percent tax charge comes from a comment Hultgren made in April in Rutland Township, when he made the mistake of openly answering a hypothetical question about the concept of a "fair tax" or "flat tax" of some flat percentage of earnings or consumption—ONLY IF it involved GETTING RID OF the IRS and the current complex federal income tax structure entirely.  The "23 percent Fair Tax" on all retail sales, first floated in 2005 by radio host Neal Boortz and Georgia Congressman John Linder—which would ALSO replace all other existing federal taxes—is NOT a proposal that Hultgren has specifically endorsed!

Yes, Randy Hultgren is much more rigid than I'd prefer on social issues. For example, I don't think abortion is any of government's damn business, and he does. However, save for the highly unlikely prospect of a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion, in the U.S. House of Representatives he frankly would have very little opportunity to affect anyone's lives on that issue—or that of gay unions or marriage (which I also have no problem with). Both of these are ultimately state-legislature issues.

It's way too simplistic to assert that either Randy Hultgren or Bill Foster are "For You" or "Not For You." One thing I'm sure of, though, is that the latter man and his allies have been slinging a lot more garbage and distortions in print and on the air during this campaign's final days than the former—which makes me support the former all the more.

(Plus, one person whom I know Bill Foster is for, is San Francisco's own Nancy Pelosi, for whom he voted as Speaker of the House in January 2009, and presumably would again this next January, were he to get re-elected.)

Thoughts and predictions on the two statewide races:

I think Mark Kirk (R) will narrowly edge out Alexi Giannoulias (D) for the U.S. Senate Seat Formerly Held By President Obama (a phrase that someone has probably trademarked by now).  I frankly don't particularly like either of these guys very much. I think Kirk would have won rather easily, especially this year—had he not decided to repeatedly "gild the lily" on his armed-service record (which he really shouldn't have had to do).

And I don't think we're going to know who's going to be Illinois' governor for the next four years until sometime Wednesday, or maybe even after. I'd have never believed until the last few weeks that Pat Quinn (D), who I thought was an affable gadfly but not much more when I covered him for college radio in the late '70s, could win a statewide election for governor—especially in what is going to be a big Republican year.

But I now think he's going to, by a whisker.

Bill Brady (R) of Bloomington, a far-right fiscal and social conservative, is the best argument you'll ever see for why responsible Republicans should get off their butts, put on parkas and get to the polls for the February primary election.

Kirk Dillard—a state senator from Hinsdale and one-time chief of staff to Illinois' finest governor ever, Jim Edgar—would have been a much better candidate, and much more effective governor. But Republicans in the collar counties said "ho-hum" in February and didn't vote.

Dillard lost by only 193 votes in the wake of a bigger downstate GOP turnout, and class act that he is, said "the people have spoken" and wouldn't push for a recount.

The more I see Brady and Quinn on the same TV screen, the more Brady makes Quinn look more gubernatorial, more principled, and smarter and tougher than he is. In reality, Quinn never felt a political breeze he didn't put up a wet finger into and react accordingly. Which means we're going to have four more years of Mike Madigan running Springfield. God help us.

The good news is, the political ads end (for a while, anyway) on Tuesday night.