PACKET EDITORIAL, August 29
By:
Here’s the good news: The violent crime rate in the United States declined last year by 10.4 percent – the largest one-year drop in the 26-year history of the Justice Department’s annual survey.
Here’s the bad news: In their all-too-predictable responses to this noteworthy event, the presidential candidates once again resorted to the kind of silly, simplistic twaddle that helps explain why so many people have lost all interest in politics, government and electoral participation.
From the Gore camp came the assertion that the latest figures offer "further proof that the Clinton-Gore administration’s anti-crime strategy of more police on our streets and fewer guns in the wrong hands has helped to create the safest America in a generation."
From Bush headquarters came this blathering rejoinder: "It’s typical for the Clinton-Gore administration to take credit for good things in America but … much of the credit for the decline in crime has to go to governors and local officials who have passed tougher laws, longer prison sentences and lowered parole rates."
What planet are these guys living on? Do they really think the American people are so dense, so gullible, so incurably susceptible to spin that they will actually buy this drivel? Don’t they realize that a large part of the reason people don’t bother to vote anymore is that this kind of nonsense insults their intelligence?
There’s nothing new, of course, about politicians taking credit for everything that’s good and blaming their opponents for everything that’s bad. But it demeans the public to claim, as the presidential candidates so shamelessly do, that they and their law enforcement policies are more than marginally responsible – at best – for the latest drop in the violent crime rate.
Most experts agree that there are two primary reasons for the decline in criminal activity. The first is demographic; as the baby-boomer generation has aged, a smaller percentage of the nation’s population falls into the cohort of people in their younger, crime-prone years. Statistically, this means fewer people would have to commit more crimes in order for the violent crime rate to do anything but drop.
The second reason is economic. Statistically, there is a close correlation between the state of the economy and the incidence of crime. Put simply, when times are bad, crime rates increase; when times are good, crime rates drop. It’s like that big sign at campaign headquarters in Little Rock said eight years ago: "It’s the economy, stupid."
Both the Gore and Bush campaign could no doubt come up with a million reasons why they and their policies and political parties deserve credit for the healthy economy. (We wouldn’t put it past them, while they’re at it, to claim responsibility for all the benefits attributable to changing demographics as well.) At the very least, were they to acknowledge that it is these factors – as opposed to the headline-grabbing but largely symbolic and relatively ineffectual crime-busting measures they have enacted at the federal and state levels – that are primarily responsible for the reduction in the violent crime rate, they could begin to have an honest, constructive discussion on the subject.
Instead, the candidates persist in misleading the American people. And, in so doing, they misread us. They think we’ll respond to shallow arguments and distorted claims, that we’ll reward candidates who appeal to our emotions rather than our intellect by giving them our vote. What they evidently fail to understand is that our more likely response, for reasons that are perfectly understandable, is not to bother to vote at all.