WILLIAMSVILLE — I used to look forward to elections. They used to give me hope - but not lately.
I know that as soon as the votes are counted and the winners determined for this midterm election, electioneering for the next presidential election cycle is going to begin, and I'm tired of political campaigns.
I'm sure I'd feel differently if politicians running for office would discuss the issues we face with honesty and directness. If the media reported the candidates' positions on the issues, I'd probably be more engaged and less cynical about the process.
But lately, campaign reporting is more about how much money candidates raise, where they stand in the polls, and who has distorted the truth about whom – so that the issues are lost in the mud, and it's hard to find a clean fact or two.
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In Vermont, our brief, legislative biennium forces politicians to make policy fairly quickly, and the campaign season for state office has been relatively short.
As a result, laws are made, passed, or changed with a swiftness absent at the federal level, where politicians seem to be more concerned with re-election than governance.
Nowhere is this more evident than with the presidency, where the president begins running for a second term almost as soon as he's sworn in, and he and his party start fundraising even sooner.
It isn't until the second term - when there is one - that a president, concerned with his legacy, attempts meaningful, long-range solutions to chronic political problems.
The fundraising alone is obscene.
A nation famous for whining about taxes and yet demanding all kinds of government fixes, from extended unemployment benefits to cleaning up BP's oil spill in the Gulf, nevertheless willingly donates millions of dollars to support political parties, candidates, and ballot initiatives.
The fundraising numbers are then reported in the press as if an election were a horse race rather than a democratic process.
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It doesn't have to be this way.
In Britain, for instance, election campaigns last only one month. That probably wouldn't work here, but a single, six-year term for the presidency might.
Along with a shift to a six-year presidency, I'd like to see our political electoral language change from the metaphors of warfare. It bodes ill, I think, to talk about politics as a war - from the war chests politicians amass to the campaigns they fight, the attacks they launch, and so on. When elected, these metaphors continue – from the war on drugs to the battle against illegal immigrants.
As evidenced by the real wars the US is currently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's clear that wars don't work.
What would it take to shift our language and perspective from one of battle to one of compassion?
Instead of fighting a war on poverty, what would happen if we embraced the impoverished? Instead of tossing money at enforcing drug laws and incarceration, what would happen if we shifted our focus to prevention?
What would happen, for instance, if we shifted our spending priorities from trying to fix the problems of addiction after the fact by providing better support for women, children, and families so that self-medication through substance abuse wouldn't be a solution to the pain and deprivation of poverty, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and homelessness?
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I despair of making these changes at the federal level, but I'm intermittently hopeful that we can achieve some of them at the local level.
Organizations like the Windham Housing Trust, for instance, make a huge difference in the lives of people who would otherwise not have a roof over their heads. Several organizations help feed the hungry in our community, some providing groceries and others serving hot meals. The Reformer Christmas Stocking will again provide clothing against the cold for local children in need.
Unhappily, it is at the federal level that the big bucks are spent - mostly for the military which, oddly, no one seems to oppose.
By contrast, we seem to argue hot and loud about spending relatively minuscule amounts of money on our local schools and social services, including health care. But we don't do the obvious calculation of how much not supporting these services up front costs.
By not providing topnotch education, we have more people leaving school without the skills to support themselves. By not providing health care, more people delay medical care, get sicker, and enter the system through hospital emergency rooms - the most expensive portal for health care.
I can't do much to influence public policy at the national level, where the language of war predominates and the money for war is appropriated with patriotic rhetoric. But in Vermont, known for independence and ingenuity, we can overcome the military state of political affairs and work together in a new language of cooperation and compassion.