MISSOURI WATCH: NATION DOES ITS BEST TO IGNORE ELECTION HOOPLA

Our family once had a great basset hound who, for reasons that now escape me, was named Wellington. Although he had many lovable characteristics, such as coexisting with numerous other family pets including two cats, rabbits, turtles and hamsters, one of the most endearing was his ability to ignore anything threatening his serenity and anyone who didn't measure up to his canine standards. If the situation was unpleasant, Wellington ignored it, thus assuring that his life was tranquil and ready to respond to the sound of his food being prepared somewhere high above him.

When an assessment is made of our society today, there appear a number of familiar characteristics that were evidenced by our lovable family pet. Each of us finds that one of our first life lessons is learning how to coexist with a great many others, all different and with varied priorities. The older we become, and presumably wiser as well, we also learn the ability of ignoring that which threatens our tranquillity or anyone who doesn't measure up to what we expect of our fellow citizens. In a sense, we all become practitioners of the Wellington Syndrome, adopting its isolationist principles in order to get along in this strange, hostile world.

At no time in our history does the Wellington Syndrome become more obvious than during a quadrennial election campaign. We do the best we can to ignore it, for no other country in the world has converted the political process into the carnival we now exhibit every four years. It all started, our high school teachers told us, with the miniature log cabins and jugs of hard cider of William Henry Harrison's presidential campaign of 1840. Nominating conventions and election campaigns are slicker now, but they still have a vaudeville air about them.

Whether today's showmanship, complete with its TV sound bites, helps or hinders the choosing of best qualified candidates is very much open to question. Not in question at all, however, is that the noisy, expensive campaigning doesn't tell us much about how the outcome---who gets elected---will bear on future national policy.

Every four years there are a few of us who take the pains to point out that election campaigns have as their purpose the electing of candidates to office. Only that, and nothing more. They are not designed to predict, let alone promise, what will follow after winning candidates are seated in office.

Indeed, what the public expects from campaigns is virtually impossible to deliver. It is only possible to choose the candidate we believe will perform better than his opponents in the office in question, whether it be presidential or gubernatorial. Somehow, over the years, we have grown to expect not only that we can choose the best candidates but what policies our candidates will deliver if they are elected.

The best way to get elected is to tell voters what they want to hear. Only coincidentally may that be what is likely to materialize, and least of all what is best for the country. Several elections ago the Democratic nominee for president was Walter Mondale who adopted something quite revolutionary in today's electoral contest: he decided to tell voters the truth about what he would do if elected. The Minnesota Democrat said it was impossible to protect entitlements and also balance the federal budget without increasing taxes. He promised to raise taxes and was overwhelmingly defeated by voters, many of whom seemed angry that he would even attempt to be honest. Mondale violated the promise-anything principle and was relegated to the political dumping ground. No candidate since has committed the same egregious error. None is likely to do so in this year's campaign carnival, and true to form, we voters will once again wrap ourselves in the Wellington Syndrome and pretend to believe what our favorite candidates promise. We will simply ignore the reality that the next president or next governor will govern by the circumstances of the moment and not by earlier campaign promises.

These observations introduce the question of what the presidential, congressional and gubernatorial contests as they are now shaping up may portend for the future. Answering that question is made more difficult this year by an interesting bit of campaign strategy engineered by President Clinton. The president preempted Republican leadership in fiscal matters by me-tooing traditional GOP calls for fiscal restraint and budget balancing. It was easy for him to do that because a rebounding economy has narrowed the budget deficit substantially.

Thereupon, as everyone knows, Senator Dole found it necessary, or at least strategic, to turn to Ronald Reagan's supply side economics. Virtually every economist interprets the proposal as an election stratagem. It has to do only with winning an election, and is at best ambiguous in its meaning for future policy.

In congressional races, the goals are even less defined, with this year's campaign seemingly centered more on the policies of House Speaker Newt Gingrich than original concepts from those seeking to become members of Congress.

If you want to get a glimpse of undefined goals, take a look at Missouri's gubernatorial contest. The incumbent is running on past initiatives, promising further refinement, and his opponent, when speaking at all, has been critical of her opponent's record. Not much substance in this contest either, and certainly little evidence of what the next governor will achieve or even undertake.

It is a toss up of which is worse: candidates who promise too much with no plans to deliver or those who promise nothing except to pursue public office by attack and accusation. The public is completely baffled and survives by waiting as calmly as possible to be fed. It worked for Wellington.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.