Don't raise expectations in election season

By Ken Newton

High expectations function as life's spoilsport. Once you look at things in the loftiest way, nothing else satisfies.

This happens often enough in popular culture. Movie critics rave about some film that thrilled them in Toronto, captivated them in Cannes, stunned them in Sundance.

By the time it gets to St. Joseph, you sit with dashed hopes in a cinema and take a sudden interest in your wristwatch.

Missouri basketball fans know the drill. Just months ago, the Tiger basketball team promised great things, with four accomplished seniors, two presumptive All-Americans and single-digit rankings in the national polls.

Supporters anticipated great days ahead.

But the team in Columbia found itself more adept at scandal than skill. If the NCAA rewarded public humiliation in its brackets, the Tigers would have been a top seed.

By Sunday night, cruel reality found the Columbia school without an invitation to March Madness. The madness for Mizzou came much earlier.

Had expectations not been so high, the fall would not have been so brutal.

In St. Joseph, movers busy themselves returning books to the shelves at the Downtown public library, a final stage in the facility's renovation. I glanced in the other day and the building looks marvelous. And its sister branch takes shape in the back parking lot of the mall on the eastern side of the city.

Anyone not familiar with the history of this might marvel at the appointments of these facilities. Civic amnesia seems a virtue in such a case.

Instead, our memories allow that considerable squabbling sent good people packing, sent cooperating boards into dissolution and delivered to taxpayers much less than they anticipated.

Again, those pesky expectations.

Politics plays especially hard with expectations. Since this is a political year, wariness remains the best course for mental hygiene.

As 2004 began, a Democrat named Howard Dean looked poised to storm to his party's presidential nomination. A camera caught him at a Vermont basketball game the other day, with no Secret Service detail in sight and looking in no particular hurry to be anywhere.

If Mr. Dean's backers had high expectations in January, they know a few more things about life today.

This serves as warning for anyone who embraces the delusion that the high road might get some wear this election season.

Two things are bound to be true between now and November. One, politicians will say they trust the wisdom of the American people. Two, they will appeal to the lesser instincts of those same wise people.

I love the phrase "wedge issue." Doesn't it make you feel good about your nation? Wedge issues define a clear split among the electorate. They serve well for office seekers and ideologues for the same reason television makes for good entertainment ... neither requires that you think very hard.

So with the country at war and too many out of work, you'll hear the words "culture war" more than you care to and find yourself learning more about same-sex marriage than you need to.

Are people who have sons and daughters in combat areas, or people getting unemployment checks without any real job prospects, really consumed with the fact two people stand as groom and groom in a San Francisco ceremony? The people so anxious to pick the culture fights always seem to have mistresses, addictions or gambling problems of their own. It's hardly a fair fight, but it diverts our attention for a while.

Fortunately, we've seen enough of it to let our expectations for a civil campaign get too high. Lower your hopes and let any discussion of issues that matter to you be a pleasant surprise.

Ken Newton of the St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press is a former editor of the Southeast Missourian.