The most entertaining aspect of a top-of-the ballot campaign in Indiana is the arrival of East Coast political consultants trying to make sense of the Hoosier character. You can watch it now in real time on the Beau Bayh commercials.
They inflate teen-age traffic tickets to reckless endangerment and shove addled, has-been legislators forward as valid representation of the electoral mood.
The consultants no doubt sell this as political hard ball, something they think Midwesterners are too unsophisticated to understand. Well, we understand well enough, and such a cynical assessment of the electorate is reason enough to reject the message.
An example is the 2012 gubernatorial race between John Gregg and Mike Pence, both authentic Hoosier voices with important and sincere differences on the issues. That wasn’t good enough for the consultants. They don’t do issues, they do character assassinations. That formula presumed Pence supporters were boorish right-wing country bigots.
Someone dug up a copy of our first “Indiana Mandate,” published years earlier when Pence was president of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation. They couldn’t have actually read it, though, for instead of being the KKK handbook implied in their attack ads it was a collection of policy papers — a tad pedantic, some said, but perhaps radical to the ear of young leftists.
The Pence campaign staff (which also had a few too many consultants) instead of just reading the book themselves took the charge seriously. An aide called us in a panic to see if we could provide a defense.
Indeed we could. There were clippings from Indiana newspapers, including an editorial from Pulliam’s Indianapolis Star lauding “Indiana Mandate” as a measured, thoughtful addition to the public-policy discussion. The kicker was a letter from Gregg himself thanking us for a copy and extending his compliments.
Regardless, the corporate media went along with the denigration, it conforming to their own low opinion of Hoosiers. We wrote Gannett asking for an apology but never heard back. Nonetheless, I cannot imagine that, all said, any votes were changed for the tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees and ads. (Pence won by 75,000 votes and the Star’s weekday circulation is now down 142,000 readers.)
My ultimate concern, though, is that the discussion here is thought to be on such a low level that the Washington consultants and the Bayh staff imagine that such base politicking would work. It is time, sigh, to limp to the polls and try to prove them wrong again. — tcl
