Third District Rep. Mark Souder has been running his radio attack ads for weeks now, which are so mean-spirited they seem to be turning off even some staunch Republicans. The spots accuse Democratic opponent Tom Hayhurst of being a millionaire doctor who wants to "retire to Congress" so he can spend all your money, nationalize everything and hand Nancy Pelosi the keys to your children's future. And that's just one of the mild ones.
Now, Hayhurst has started running the first of his TV ads, which ends with the doctor saying this: "If you want to change what goes on in Washington, change the people you send there." At first blush, this sounds like a low-key, "Oh, what a nice man I am" response to Souder's venom. But if you think about it, it's just a much subtler form of attack. Not "This man has all the wrong values and will take them to Washington," as Souder implies. But, "The government is really screwed up, and guess who helped do it?" Same message, different style.
And I think I'd like to disagree with the Doc's contention. Changing the people we send to Washington will not change Washington. We've seen that time after time -- Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, most of them just get sucked into the institutional culture, and Congress never changes except to get worse. Just consider Souder -- who got elected as someone who would challenge the status quo, then go home after six terms. After six terms, he is the status quo and has a hundred reasons why he should stay there, no matter what he said.
There is a tendency for us to be co-opted by the institutions we try to change from the inside, yes? That is a classic theme of literature.
