While I’ve seen no campaign literature whatsoever come my way, Jack received a good example of why Major Tom’s rush to fast-track Charter revision straight past a public discussion and directly into a political campaign was profoundly stupid and irresponsible.
Which doesn’t, of course, excuse opponents from not having the balls to run a non-idiotic campaign (opting instead to do it this way, one presumes, because “this is how it’s done” or “everybody does it”) but many of us kept saying that this was pretty much the level of “debate” we were going to end up having once Council referred the proposal to the ballot.
So, in the end, on the one hand we’ve got Team Potter running around lying about the proposal and just being generally hypocritical, and on the other hand we have opponents trying to tap into Portland’s general hatred of the GOPresident.
“We have seen what to much power in the hands of one person looks like in Washington DC,” says the mailer Jack received. “We don’t want that for Portland.”
Now, the issue of granting too much power to the mayor through this proposal is a real one. It’s why I and others have suggested people imagine the mayor they’ve disagreed with the most having the power of a Curiously-Strong Mayor.
But the above? The above is just moronic.
It’s also just as insulting to the voters’ intelligence is Major Tom’s constant, hypocritical, and irrelevant pushing of the emotional hot button of the tram. Both tactics are about short-circuiting the mind of the voter, getting them to reflexively connect a position on Charter reform with something else entirely which they dislike on an emotional level.
To be honest, I think it’s more likely that voters instinctively will notice the complete disconnect between the two.
Whether consciously or not, their thoughts more likely will be something like this: “Last time I checked, Portland’s mayor couldn’t wiretap all of our phones or send us off to die in a senseless war in Lake Oswego.”
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