Politics and Social Media Sunshine

Twenty-five years ago, when the shift hit the land in San Francisco and we suffered a the Loma Prieta Earthquake, I was working for Mayor Dianne Feinstein.  One of my co-workers was a smart, headstrong newly minted graduate of the University of California named Jill Osur.  An incident happened in her life yesterday that illustrates the differences in politics in the media then and now.

Minding her business, probably drinking her morning coffee, Jill witnessed a school board candidate named Aimee Moss taking the sign of opponent Sherri McGoff off of her lawn.  Appalled, Jill immediately took to Facebook and wrote about the incident.  Seven hours later, she had confronted candidate Moss, who was evasive but admitted to taking the sign.  Jill posted her account of the conversation on Facebook.  Two hours after that post, the Contra Costa Times picked up the story with the candidate admitting to the caper and blaming “the stress of the campaign.”

It happened at lightning speed one week before the election.

Back when Jill and I worked together, we didn’t have the internet, social media and all the rest. For news, one relied on print, radio and television.  News, particularly in local races for boards travelled slowly.  One newspaper reporter covering a school board race would have to cover multiple candidates at multiple events and would be overwhelmed. A week before the election, the citizen and the offended candidate would have to hammer this beat reporter and hope that they picked up the story.  Election week could have passed and this ethical and possible legal breach might not have seen the light of day.

In California political history this is illustrated by the famous race where an incumbent’s campaign manager was being investigated in a murder.  It took weeks for the opponent to get the story published in a newspaper.  Days after the story ran, a television station picked it up and the camera crew cornered the incumbent. His sound byte that ran on the evening news that night was “What my staff does on their own time is their business.” Glacial news cycle compared to today.

As we are all too aware newspapers have been gutted, most radio stations don’t have news broadcasts, much less a news department and local television stations are way too stretched.  There probably is not a reporter even covering this school board race.  In this instance, it took citizen Jill Osur to report it on her news feed, follow up and then see someone at the city desk report it.

Our democracy relies on informed citizens.  Too often, someone wins a school board race, then a city council race, then goes up the rung to state assembly or senate and then on to Congress while passing under the electorate’s radar in today’s news media vacuum. Citizens need to report what they see and need more outlets than social media to chronicle their interactions with candidates.  Established mainstream media has to be creative in finding ways to cover the local races that have such a huge impact on our lives;

Now that we have had an election...

Yesterday, within fifteen minutes, two people demonstrated exactly what is wrong with political discourse in this country.  Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, who has lost all of his post-9/11 statesman aura, stated that the U.S. and New York government combined response to Hurricane Sandy was worse than Hurricane Katrina.  Then, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean decided to aver that if Barack Obama lost re-election it was due to incidents that were anecdotal at best and gossip at worst.  These two guys are supposed to be leaders but they were doing their best to divide this country. 

We have now re-elected a President, selected a Senate and a House and now it is time to heal the rifts in this country.  Since most of you who read this are opinion leaders, as my friends, I ask you to do your best to raise the level of civic discourse.  We cannot look to others, such as current and former elected leaders do it, we have to take the initiative.

How do we do this?  Let’s not continue the time honored legacy of “if it comes from my side, it is o.k.”  The above stated case shows where there should be concern from the left and the right about what their spokespeople say and how they say it.  Yes, I do believe that there was a effort on the part of conservative office holders to have a more favorable electorate.   But, nobody is complaining about the process here in Illinois where we have to show picture identification (as President Obama did when he voted) and the relatively short amount of time we had to vote early.    But somehow, the same rules were greeted with hue and cry around the country.  Could it be that Illinois was not a swing state and had a Democrat as Governor and Secretary of State?

Part of this defending of one’s side is behavior that is disrespectful of our government and our process.  No President since the start of the 20^th century has been heckled from the floor of Congress, had his birth called into question despite overwhelming evidence that he was legally born in the United States and had a statement interrupted by a member of the U.S. media.  This President also had to deal with people questioning what he was spending on state trips.  This is the leader of the free world and there are several people, both foreign and domestic, that would do harm if they could.  Regardless of party, the President of the United States must be protected.  This isn’t fair politics. This is ginning up support for your view, it is libel.

Meantime, because those on the President’s side of the aisle, because he did reach out to Senators and Representatives across the aisle and had, of all horrors, Republicans in his cabinet he was derided as spineless.  Since there was not going to be a single payer health system, he was seen as a sell out.  Immigration reform didn’t happen, the prison at Guantanamo Bay is still open.  He was a fraud.  Then you sat on your hands during the mid-term elections.  This isn’t politics, it is bratty, I didn’t get my way so I will pout antics. 

I respect that fact that conservatives believe in less government, more local control of resources, bubble down economics and laizez-faire policy.  Also, I know that on the left there is a philosophy that we need a centralized government to oversee  and guard against corporate excess, protect the environment, guarantee human rights and a tax structure that demands more of the wealthy.   But, neither side has a corner on the market of patriotism.  Neither side is un-American.  Putting a flag on your lapel or on your front porch is the easy part.  Respecting your opponents view is the difficult part of our democracy.

Today, as you read this, regardless of who you voted for or backed, you did not lose.  We all won.  A election  selected a government in process that had integrity.  What we need to do now is stop our media from hyperventilating, stop throwing mud at our neighbor and start demanding a higher level of discourse from all of our elected officials.