One risky gambit

I applaud the grand concept, but recognize the hollow tactic.

Tom Cotton, the Republican candidate for the U.S. senator, proposed Sunday that he and U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor engage in five man-to-man debates around the state, eschewing any moderator or panel of questioners and regulated only by a timekeeper.

Thus Cotton defied something I’d written-that big-time modern campaigns of this nature had become soulless exercises of corporatized politics, in this case Democrat Inc. for Pryor and Republican-Koch Inc. for Cotton.

I called these corporations purveyors of cynically distorted messages that were beamed to us through our television sets, bankrolled by unregulated big money coming mostly from elsewhere. I’d said the candidates themselves weren’t trusted to speak spontaneously because the stakes were entirely too high-not for the Arkansas voter, but for the out-of-state investors-to risk a candidate’s saying something true or stupid or, worse, both.

So here comes Cotton, a creation of out-of-state conservative media and the money of the Koch brothers and the libertarian Club for Growth, to propose that he and his foe step out from behind their high-dollar boardrooms and take it straight to the people. Pryor is not going to do that, of course.

For one thing, a candidate at this level never appears to be accepting the idea of an opponent. For another, the last time Pryor spoke spontaneously he said something about Cotton’s seeming-almost-to have a military-based sense of entitlement to the U.S. Senate. He’s still trying to get that foot out of his mouth.

And for another, Cotton’s proposal is merely tactical-hollow in that sense-and, in its own way, as cynical as the messages both of these corporations have been lathering.

We now have seen three consecutive polls in which Cotton, formerly viewed as having the advantage because of the anti-Obama, anti-Obamacare reddening tide of the state, is stuck in the low 40s and trailing Pryor.

No front-runner dares risk such a gambit as Cotton’s of Sunday. A front-runner likes the status quo, the prevailing rhythm. A candidate who has suddenly fallen behind is the one who needs to shake things up.

What better way to appear to do that than to propose real dialogue, especially when you know your opponent will make the tactically reasonable decision to decline or resist or finesse, in turn allowing you to go around the state calling him a chicken?

And while you call him a chicken, the Koch brothers will stay on television with silly commercials calling on people to tell him they wish he wasn’t so no-account in his voting in Washington.

Pryor surely wants only a couple of tightly restricted joint appearances, one on AETN and one aired by somebody else, with tight moderation and rigid rules. He wants these to be conventional faux debates scheduled in plenty of time for Democrat Inc. to buy TV time explaining away any spontaneous goof-ups he might commit.

Cotton probably would be better off with that as well. Truth is he’s no engaging or deft communicator. Truth is his voting record is a goldmine of attack points for an opponent-on Medicare privatization, disaster aid, the farm bill, student loans and a government shutdown.

Distressingly, attacks by Pryor and Democrat Inc. on that voting record were not changing the campaign dynamic. Tragically, what has changed the dynamic, apparently, is the brazenly dishonest commercial being run ubiquitously by Harry Reid’s super-PAC. Rather than fairly accuse Cotton of wanting to convert Medicare to a voucher system because he’s an anti-government extremist, the ad accuses him of wanting to do that because he once worked for insurance companies and now seeks to repay those insurance companies with money out of old folks’ pockets.

Negative advertising is fine. With Cotton’s alarming voting record, negative advertising is commanded. But dishonest advertising that essentially ignores the opponent’s sincere oddball extremism and alleges, in defiance of known facts, that he is corrupt, that he is paying back former benefactors-that’s a disgrace.

Cotton worked for $89,000 a year as a junior staffer for a big-time consulting firm and once got assigned to work on a team for a government mortgage agency that does insurance. On that basis, Cotton bragged in his biography that he had experience in a wide array of business fields, including “insurance.”

From that, Pryor and Democrat Inc. have fabricated that he worked for health-insurance carriers and is paying them back.

A Pryor aide told me that, since Cotton asserts confidentiality agreements about the consulting company’s clients, we don’t know that it’s not true that he worked for health-insurance companies. We don’t know that it is true, either. Yet Pryor and Democrat Inc. keep saying it.

I’d like to see the candidates go man-to-man on that outrage. But no one is really serious about that.

The real battle will remain corporate. The real outrage will remain distortion. The real tragedy will be people falling for it.

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial, Pages 17 on 04/15/2014

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