By MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

 Item One:  Unsavory Nature of Political Campaigns

 What I saw of the Iowa Republican Presidential primary debate, and it wasn’t much, brought to mind two unsavory aspects of American political campaigns that politicians, the press and the public ought to try to temper before we go full throttle into the 2012 races.

The first was incivility. The media carnival barkers and fire-breathing partisans were anxious for the candidates to brutalize one another, particularly fellow Minnesotans Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.  From news reports of the debate—again, I missed some of the exchanges, they got some of what they wanted, but not much.  I am told the two Minnesotans went at it, dropping the Minnesota nice persona—isn’t that special—but they really did not beat the bejesus out of each other.

It will only be a matter of time.  American political campaigns have been and remain a black and blue contact sport.  But that doesn’t make it right or healthy for the nation, or for voters.  The way the candidates and the media treated each other in Iowa is just the beginning.  It doesn’t bode well for the next 14 months.   There is nothing wrong with a vigorous debate, creating contrasts, asking tough but relevant and fair questions or challenging candidates’ records.  The problem, of course, is that it is a slippery slope, and once incivility gets introduced, it isn’t long before candidates, and more their handlers, are spewing a torrent of negativity, personal attacks, innuendo and character assassinations that make most Americans turn their heads and turn off politics.    As a result, voters  are less informed and more inclined to make decisions on the basis of emotion rather than reason, and innocent bystanders like spouses and children get hurt.    

A change would be nice.

Item Two: Fact and Fiction

The second hallmark of the Iowa experience was the blurring of the lines between truth and fiction, another one of those political phenomena that gets worse as the campaigns drag on.  The American campaign culture encourages candidates to exaggerate, confuse, mislead and misrepresent what is real. 

 I don’t mean to pick on Michele Bachmann, but she is good at it.  In her closing statement, I heard her say the debt-ceiling legislation enacted in August gave President Obama a blank check of $2.4 trillion (a $2.4 trillion check is not a blank check) and all we got in return was $21 billion in cuts.

That statement stretches the truth so far it comes close to the truth’s border with a lie.  The agreement doesn’t give Obama much latitude on cutting spending at all, and the $21 billion, that is the savings just in the first year of a 10-year program.  The statement is grossly misleading, at best.  Sometimes supporters can be drawn closer to the flame with falsehoods rather than facts.  Like incivility, the practice will only get worse and voters will go to the polls once again with excessive expectations, misinformation and false hopes of political redemption.  Brooks Jackson’s fact checkers at factcheck.com are going to be very busy and badly needed.  Make a contribution today.

Item Three: Congressional Vacations and Media Mythology

Rosalind Helderman wrote in the Washington Post on August 5 that congressional leaders ended a standoff between the House and Senate and reauthorized the Federal Aviation Administration “that did not require summoning vacationing House members from their fishing cabins or senators fromt heir summer homes.”

Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid didn’t try to summon members of congress from their fishing holes and summer cabins because they weren’t there. 

 That kind of smart-aleck, disingenuous writing has no place in news reporting and really not in commentary either,.

 Comments like that perpetuate the myth, created by the media, that congressional recesses are vacations.  No doubt some members of Congress get away with their families during August, but most members, for most of the month, excuse me, work their asses off, traveling from one town to another, from restaurants to clothing stores, from farms to grain elevators, from factories to fishing boats.  And the good members don’t just visit with their base supporters, they expose themselves to a wide range of people and opinions.  I spent a lot of years in sixteen counties in Central Illinois doing just that with a Congressman twenty years my senior, with whom I couldn’t keep up. It was no vacation, Rosalind.

Item Four: Human Tragedy in The life and death of Theodore James

He worked in the White House for 50 years for 10 Presidents.   When James retired several of them wrote him nice letters he never saw because they were sent to the White House.  He died at 71 in squalor and what was apparently lethal mental illness.  His story was chronicled in a  Washington Post article, in which  the reporter asked the lame question that is always asked:  “Could his death have been prevented?”  Of course it could. 

    The pertinent question is: Why did he die in the horrible, almost unspeakable conditions in which he lived out his final days, and more specifically, why did the District of Columbia’s massive bureaucracy fail him?  District officials were still posting code violation notices on his front door five days after he died.  As columnist Colbert I. King regularly reminds us about youth in DC foster care, there are too many among us, slipping through the cracks of good intentions and bad bureaucracy.

Item Five: Leave Bert and Ernie Alone

Some gay advocacy group started an online petition urging Sesame Street to marry Muppets Bert and Ernie.  Fortunately, Sesame Street said no.

If you’re not a parent, Sesame Street and the characters of the late Jim Henson like Bert and Ernie, Big Bird, the Count and Oscar the Grouch, have been entertaining and unobtrusively educating pre-schoolers for 40 years or more. It has been one of the most successful television endeavors ever.  The people who run Sesame Street have over the years drawn a simple, but right conclusion about their show—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Turning Sesame Street into a manipulative tool of social engineering and political correctness would doom the production forever.  The pre-schooler plate is already too full.  The Cookie Monster doesn’t need to quit eating cookies. Super Grover doesn’t need to hang up his cape, and Miss Piggy can romance Kermit all she wants and doesn’t need to go on a diet.  Leave ‘em alone.

 Editors’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for

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