Tuesday’s on with the spin

Tuesday’s coming.

The smart people who wear the smart suits and say smart things about election day politics say Tuesday will replace one set of folks previously thought to be smart with the latest incarnation of what’s smart.

This old farm boy from Johnson County doesn’t know much about what passes for smart. (But you already knew that.) Such is especially true in that beltway around the nation’s capital where all the political geniuses migrate and belch out rules and regs and requirements to fix what ails us until what ails us pops up again and we learn that the previous rules and regs and requirements are what ails us so we have to pass rules and regs and requirements to undo what previously was done to undo the ailment.

We have an election in between the doing and undoing of all the aforementioned rules and regs and requirements. The smart people now tell us how the doing and undoing will be different this time because the doers have a mandate to undo or the undoers have a mandate to do. Sometimes what we learn is that it’s all do-do. Despite the level of political IQ, we usually know — even the farm boys from Johnson County — which direction that rolls. Especially the farm boys from Johnson County.

The scope is different and the suits aren’t as smart, but local and state elections are also about the difference between less of more or more of less or more or less the same old same old. Which is to say elections at most levels are about the difference between groups who believe government is doing too much, groups who believe government is not doing enough, groups who think government is not doing enough for them but doing too much for those, and groups who have no idea what government is doing but they want government to do more/less of it.

Whether you want more or less, Tuesday’s coming. The only thing certain about the results from Tuesday is that the day tells us nothing about who gets more, who gets less and who gets away with it and who doesn’t.

On the national level, we should know Tuesday’s results in about two years.

Republicans are running primarily on an anti-Obama, pro-small government platform. We’ve heard Republicans say the same before — at least the part about smaller government. But about the only difference in modern history between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats raise taxes and increase spending and Republicans lower taxes and increase spending. It’s doubtful national Republicans know how to organize a barbecue. But if the national GOP’ers truly figure out a way to use proceeds from the sale of Obama’s teleprompter to lower the national deficit, I’m predicting it will take them at least two Congressional cycles.

At the state level, we should hope Tuesday brings us relatively unspectacular headlines.   We certainly have some issues in our Arkansas government requiring attention. There is the thing about all those damn cars and the question about how many vehicles are necessary to the necessary functioning of state government. We’ll have to do something about the $300 million to $400 million we owe or will owe the federal government for unemployment insurance. Funding prisons and schools are always the top topics because we continue the struggle to re-educate the incarcerated and re-incarcerate the uneducated. Unfortunately, some of both happens at both institutions.

Overall, we have a decent state government. It’s one of just four state governments nationwide not now in the midst of a budget crisis with which higher taxes and reduced government services are part of the big sandwich those folks are forced to eat.

Anyway, we’ll know in about 120 days what Tuesday means at the Arkansas Legislative level. It is likely the Arkansas House and Senate will have a higher number of Republicans than normal. What is not certain is what those Republicans will believe of their improved standing. If a majority think they have a mandate to challenge the relatively conservative administration of Gov. Mike Beebe, well, uhhh, it will get ugly and stupid. If the larger gathering of Republicans attempt to out-conservative the conservative Beebe, the legislative session will become something other than an exercise in responsible governing.

If they instead realize their improved standing has less to do with them and more to do with Arkansans rejecting Pelosi and Reid, then the larger standing of Republicans may become larger following the 2012 election. Again, we’ll probably know more in about 120 days what Tuesday means at this level.

At the city of Fort Smith level we’ll probably know within 6 months if on Tuesday we gained a more- or less-effective city board of directors. Will this board have the fiscal and political discipline to seek a convention center funding solution without forwarding a laundry list of options to the voters? Give it six months. If the board is unable to make a single decision by then, the new bosses will indeed be the same as the old bosses.

And we’ll likely know within 6 months if the new board reflects a governing body that sets and effectively pursues big-picture visionary goals; or if it will be a body that instead succumbs to the whims of political winds and micromanages city government. For example, we’ll likely know within 6 months if the new board is focused on the best utilization of city resources that result in transformative quality-of-place improvements, or if they get bogged down regulating dog and cat ownership or attacking a cable operator that changes the channels on religious programming.

The great H.L. Mencken once noted: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Said another way, be careful what you wish (vote) for, because you just might get it.

Tuesday’s coming.

Let’s hope the results eventually bring us more good than hard.