By Jonathan Lindberg
Is it just me, or does politics these days seem more like a really bad play with an ending predictable and contrived, and a cast of players that already know their parts and no matter how hard they try they cannot seem to break away from the already approved script?
Since the middle of last year, the race in Tennessee for the United States Senate has been divided by campaign advisors and consultants into three separate seasons. The first season, fundraising and grassroots, lasted all of last year and into April. During this time, both Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary were the most active communicators. Using constant emails and endless trips from one end of the state to the other, their hope was to define Bob Corker as a moderate, pushing him as close to the center as possible. The tactics seemed effective, as Corker barely peaked over 10% in any poll West of Chattanooga.
The second season of this race is the one we find ourselves in now, the one-man-media-machine, that being Bob Corker. If any headline has come out of this race so far, it is this: Bob Corker is a fundraising machine (showing no disparity between money from Democrats or Republicans). With a four-to-one advantage in funds, Corker has the luxury of running an endless string of mostly-unopposed ads in every market across the state with the hopes of defining himself as a conservative. The question remains, will the efforts of Bryant and Hilleary to paint Corker as a moderate-in-conservative-clothing stick? So far, Corker is out of single-digits and rising in the polls.
The last part of the race should take place sometime July, when all three campaigns are able to unleash television and radio ads and this race turns into a media war. Here is where things get ugly. With little money to spend and no time to lose, both Bryant and Hilleary will most likely skip right to attacks-ads, once again trying to define Corker and undo his media barrage, pushing him back to the center.
So where does all that leave us? It leaves me feeling sick. Not so much at the outcome, all three seem to be fine men. But rather at the process that is being used to achieve this outcome. How we feel about a particular candidate is now defined by thirty-seconds of manufactured gravy coming through our television screens. What’s missing is real dialogue, an ongoing debate among the candidates over issues, not personality, over the things that matter most. Both Bryant and Hilleary seem open to this. Corker on the other hand, refuses to talk issues with his opponents, declining invitation after invitation.
I am proud to say that the Main Street Journal hosted the only real debate of this race. This race really needed a dozen other debates just like it. And though Bob Corker did not participate, and both Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary sounded more like old friends rather than campaign opponents, the thought that for one night, this campaign was not about who-did-what twenty-five years ago or how much money one person raised in such-and-such quarter, but rather, it was about the issues that mattered most, to every person sitting in that room. And after all, isn’t that what a three-legged race like this is really all about?
