iowa underground blog

David Yepsen kibitzes this morning about dirty politics in Iowa:

The attacks from Democrats and left-of-center groups on Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle have started early.

It’s too bad. Iowa would be better off if political parties and interest groups spent less time savaging their opponents and more time outlining positive visions for what they want to do.

One reason Iowa lags behind in so many areas is that recent gubernatorial campaigns have been more negative than positive. As a result, governors have failed to build consensus or a mandate for changing anything in Iowa.

It started a few weeks ago, when the Iowa Democratic Party unveiled a “strategy memo to Iowa reporters” in which the party outlined the plans and rationale for its attacks. Environmentalists have also weighed in. And the radio barbs have started. As the federal budget debates unfold, we can expect other groups to pile on. Nussle will be criticized for not cutting the deficit – and then criticized when he does. Of course, none of it is coordinated.

On top of that, the whispering about Nussle’s divorce can also be heard, though it’s not clear who is doing it.

Yepsen is wholeheartedly agreeable in that the gubernatorial races have been nasty, ugly affairs. Of course, Yepsen contributes to the debate by demagouging Democratic candidates whenever he can, and pays no attention to statements like this:

“We are going to win, and the Democrats are scared of what Vander Plaats and Nussle are going to do throughout this campaign to win,” [Vander Plaats] said.

Here’s the situation as it exists: the Democratic Party currently holds the “policy bench” – folks like Mike Blouin, Mike Fitzgerald (whom I think would have made an interesting candidate), Ed Fallon (the only candidate willing to honestly discuss land use and DHS reforms) and Chet Culver. Right now, the GOP is bringing home a guy that has made Washington politics his career and pairing him with a guy that couldn’t hold his own in any primary without the backing of wealthy donors.

Nussle and Vander Plaats have simply been standing on the sidelines (or been doing other things) and really have no idea as to what’s going on with Iowa policy making outside of the typical GOP fodder: school vouchers, fiscally unsound tax cuts, etc., etc. So of course this campaign is going to be dirty and ugly, with no one talking about the issues that might actually upset the “donor crowd”.

... and we’ll all be much worse of because of it.

Mr. Yepsen: if you want to improve the ‘tone’ of these things, it can begin with you – arguably the most widely read political columnist in Iowa. How ‘bout spending some time investigating the issues that you promote (like economic development) during the political offseason and investigate where the candidates actually stand on these issues? That would be vastly more helpful to all of us than talking about candidates “being too liberal” or “not being the right __“, or even helping to spread whatever “whisper campaigns” might be going on? (Note that a “whisper campaign” never goes anywhere unless someone starts shouting it.)

To be honest, the best political coverage these days seems to come from the people who’ve set up blogs or personal sites – if I want to read about total nonsense as it relates to the political scene in Iowa I usually start with the far right hand column in the Des Moines Register opinion pages.

• Sousy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 7:03 am and is filed under Politics, Iowa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.