From the Quad City Times:

No matter who wins, here's an agenda to move Illinois forward
By Mike Lawrence | Tuesday, November 07, 2006


It is small wonder — after a gubernatorial campaign focused on such profound questions as “What’s she thinking?” and “Had enough?” — that most Illinoisans are thinking they have had enough of both Rod Blagojevich and Judy Topinka.
Their trash talk clearly has Illinoisans in the dumps. So here we are, on the eve of an election, with potential voters having graduated from apathy to alienation when the state’s formidable challenges should compel their engagement and even excitement.

Youngsters in scores of school districts are being cheated of adequate funding. We refuse to make the sound investment of tax dollars in community-based services that will expand access to health care in underserved areas, help people with mental illness or developmental disabilities to achieve maximum independence, encourage drug abusers to rehabilitate themselves, and improve the odds for parolees to become productive members of society. We continue to flout the fiscal discipline that requires us to make hard revenue and spending decisions in lieu of building a deficit in the billions that, to our everlasting shame, will burden our kids and grandkids.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors demonstrate the rotting of state government did not end with George Ryan’s exit, and public opinion polls indicate most people do not expect to see true reform.

Never has the need for strong, inspiring leadership been greater. But neither Blagojevich nor Topinka can credibly claim a mandate to lift our state because they have given us far more derision than vision in the nastiest and most dispiriting gubernatorial contest in decades, perhaps ever. The two major-party candidates dueled about debates instead of debating. They asked us to decide who is the creepier, the more tolerant of corruption, the more Ryanesque, and the majority of registered voters are responding, “Who cares?

A generally light turnout is expected. The Green Party’s Rich Whitney likely will do better than most third-party candidates by attracting voters who share his disgust with Blagojevich and Topinka but not necessarily his platform, which might surprise them. More and more Illinoisans disdain politicians and politics.

Although a future gubernatorial candidate, perhaps Democratic rising star Lisa Madigan or a Republican capable of generating comparable enthusiasm, could capture our imagination, help revive our sense of citizenship and lay out a gutsy agenda to address Illinois’ pressing needs, we dare not wait four years for a single politician to rescue us from this quicksand of disillusionment. We should act with dispatch to:

* Establish a broadly based gubernatorial debate commission, housed at the State Board of Elections, to facilitate agreements between the candidates on venues and dates.

* Require candidates for state office to appear in their TV spots, especially the ones that savage their opponents, and declare they approved the commercials.

* Encourage more Illinoisans to participate in the nominating process by allowing them to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary without declaring a party.

* Assemble a bipartisan group of prominent state government alumni, such as Gov. Jim Edgar, Illinois Senate President Phil Rock and Comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch, to develop schemata for dealing on a bipartisan basis with the state’s dire fiscal situation and other major policy matters.

* Reinstitute civics education as a staple in our schools, either as a separate class or an integral part of a social studies curriculum.

* Encourage groups, such as the League of Women Voters and the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, to do more outreach to elementary and high school students to impress upon them the responsibilities and opportunities of citizenship.

We can do better. We must do better.

Mike Lawrence is a former managing editor and Springfield bureau chief for the Quad-City Times. He now directs the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute in Carbondale, Ill.