Jim’s Column 1/26/12
This will be a long eleven months until the general election of November 2012. It’s a ten year remap year so many more seats are at stake than usual. Due to population changes many elected persons, who are incumbents, are challenging a completely new territory. My representative district, the 89th, has very minimal change. The one half of Byron that I did represent becomes part of the 90th and I pick up Mount Carroll, an area I know well and look forward to running there. Many others, including Congressman Don Manzullo, have very significant changes.
The importance of all of this is as politicians run for office the rhetoric can truly ramp up. The Presidential ads are already becoming ugly and I am personally angry at my own party. I despise negative advertising and this political season, so early on, is already being bombarded with some of the worst I’ve seen. We need good folks to run at all levels and more and more people say to me “why should I expose myself to that”. My answer of course is rise above it, we need good people.
To my great good fortune, I’ve gotten to know many highly respected persons in Northwest Illinois. I enjoy their company and value their mentorship. Perhaps some don’t know that they are my mentors but I cling to their sage advice.
One such mentor is my good friend Gary Quinn, Market President at U.S. Bank and former newspaper publisher. Here is a man who enjoys reading economic textbooks in his leisure time. I’m thinking “you’ve got to be kidding me”, no, he’s not and over breakfast recently he gave me a book “Economic Facts and Fallacies” by Thomas Sowell. He assured me “it’s like eating peanuts, you can’t stop reading it”. Well, he’s right and one of the first quotes that jumps out at you, credited to Henry Rosovsky, is “never underestimate the difficulty of changing false belief by facts”. Well, this might be an economics book but that sure is the seed for negative campaigning. Once it’s out there it’s hard to reverse.
I’ve yet to make up my mind on which presidential candidate to get behind and filtering factual information from misinformation and out of context information is unbelievably difficult.
I’ve watched closely the increase in attack ads on the perceived front runner, (the attacks by my own party mind you) and I won’t say I’m appalled but I am deeply disappointed. Sadly they work. Yes, changing false beliefs with facts is unbelievably difficult. We are a better people than this and it’s time that we pulled ourselves out of the gutter.