Article November 6, 2000 Issue

A fresh approach to elections

By Kevin G. Graunke

It's a familiar scenario: a political candidate gives a speech, hosts a town meeting, or engages a challenger in lively debate. Moments afterward, analysts and observers reduce the issues to a few token sound bites for the eleven o'clock news.

This kind of media treatment tends to trivialize ideas and to compress candidates' views into predictable clichés. News media in search of ratings sometimes find a candidate's private life more compelling than the public policy he or she would shape. Talk show hosts, depending on their own politics, frequently "spin" a candidate's views to fit a cookie-cutter position or identity: conservative, liberal, anti-this, or pro-that.

Thinking voters, however, can rise above the glare and blare of these reports to see another, more useful approach to evaluating candidates: the spiritual one. This view helps to eliminate the cloud of "personality politics," and enables us to make more discerning decisions.

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