How are we supposed to know the real mind of a national political candidate when his persona, the thing that makes him "him," is being redone, shaped, and sold to us by "image" merchants? In these times when our country's substantial issues are enormous, such as cutthroat economic competition by the European Union, the certainty (no matter which party is in power) of a lingering dangerous war with Islamic Nazism, and our aging population's retirement and healthcare needs, just to name a few, we don't seem to have authentic leaders in the wings? Fact is, our store-bought political process seems no longer capable of dealing seriously with those major issues facing this nation. The old time political process has been taken over, and made irrelevant by a new breed of political professionals. These guys think you and I are stupid. One could call them "political professionals," but they're really snake oil salesmen, professional liars who come to us with titles like campaign consultants, pollsters (with questions designed to get the answers they want), media counselors, peddlers of focus groups, speech doctors, "image shapers," and advertizing men who have made themselves indispensable to all big-league politicians. These "consultants" make it all but impossible for us to know how a candidate, who might have some good ideas of his own, would address any of our nation's real problems. I view these "political professionals" as an evil that is dragging down American democracy.

In the old days, the time before politicians were coached by professionals, and could still come across as authentic human beings, the voters pretty well knew what they were getting. For example, I don't think the fabulous "in your face" late Huey P. Long, governor and U. S. Senator from Louisiana, would have had much need of a professional political coach. Huey was seen by the poor and lower middle classes of his state as a human being who had plans to help them. And, he was first and last an authentic man of the people, and his appeal to the man in the street was intimate. He began public life by attacking the "interests" and "corporations" and built his political career from talking with as many ordinary people as he possibly could, and, rural county seat by rural county seat, promised them better roads (he delivered), health care for the poor (he delivered), new toll-free bridges (he delivered) thus saving farmers huge amounts of money in getting their crops to market, free textbooks for every child in the state, black or white (he delivered), and he went to war with Standard Oil Company, and made them (once again, he delivered) pay the people of Louisiana a fair "separation fee" for drilling in their state. He regulated the utility companies (usually owned by out of state rate raping companies), and in general worked and delivered results for the poor of his state. The elite of Louisiana referred to the "Kingfish" as a lying demagogue, a prodigious self-seeker, vulgar, loose, and criminal but "his" people (the majority voters) loved him. Huey's "method?" See what the people need, find out why they don't have it, go after the "fat cats," force them, by legislation and tax threats, to give over some of what they were stealing from the people, all the while making his enemies fear his independence and power, a power granted to him over and over by the people.

If the likes of Huey Long ( a real Democrat) were in politics today, he'd break up the present day thieving oil companies into smaller and numerous competing companies, as he did in Louisiana in the 30's.

But alas, there's no Huey Long in either party today. Politicians today are more afraid of big oil, for example, than the voters, for they know that many voters are saps who are more interested in "American Idol," than the future of our country. So, we the people are with left with "Big Oil," which has the money to buy TV commercials that "train" us to vote for national politicians (Democrat or Republican) who will do their bidding.

But, one has digressed a bit from my original lament about political consultants ruining the democratic process. In the space we have left, let's look at some of the big time political consultants. Let's start with Pat Caddell, who was, in the day, a youthful pollster, turned consultant, who gained Jimmy Carter's confidence in 1976, and at age twenty-five could plausibly tell himself that he had elected a President. It was an article of faith with Caddell that voters do not care much about the big policy issues, and he no doubt felt vindicated by post-election polling indicating that Carter's views remained unknown to about half of all voters. A month after the election, Caddell hit Carter with his belief that, "governing with public approval requires a continuing political campaign," with endless polling required to determine what was working (not for the nation, but "politically"), and what was not. Presumably rescuing the American hostages in Iran, by massive military action and strategic bombing was not a good "political" move. Carter's reliance on polling to dictate his reaction to Iran at the time has caused us the loss of thousands of servicemen and women, for Carter taught the Islamic savages that America's presidents, such as "Jimmy," usually have no backbone.

In the 1980 election, the Reagan Republicans began the campaign with John Sears as their lead professional. Sears worked too hard at "managing" Reagan's public performances, and that led to irrate shouts by his friends and backers to "Let Reagan be Reagan." Sears was out, soon after the New Hampshire primary, and the rest is history.

A consultant who, strangely, has never been fired, as Caddell and Sears were, is Bob Shrum, who began as a speech writer for George McGovern, and went on to advise a string of other presidential candidates: John Lindsay, Richard Gephardt, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter (but only in 1980), Bob Kerrey, Al Gore, and John Kerry. Shrum is a committed far left leaning liberal. His batting average for successful presidential candidates is .000? You'd think us Democrats could find a man with a new message, other than Shrum's tactic of having rich Democrat candidates lament being rich, while personally living the lifestyle of the rich and famous? You see, rich Democrat politicians, even when consistently crushed by their self-defeating "tax the rich" hypocrisy, still think we're stupid out here? It's no wonder we consistently lose. We're not running real Roosevelt Democrats against Republicans. We've been running nitwits (such as Howard Dean and convicted liar, Al Sharpton) in the primaries, and department store dummies (Al Gore) in the national presidential elections, with the exception of Bill Clinton, who is neither a dummy, nor a nitwit. He just couldn't get rid of that "for sale" sign his wife first attached to his backside, back in the day in Little Rock.

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.