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In an effort to bring even more citizen voices into the political mix, Concert 90 is participating in The Voices of Florida Project. It's a coalition of Florida Public Radio stations, six newspapers and 11 television stations including the St. Petersburg Times, The Bradenton Herald and WTSP-TV, Channel 10.
The group's political coverage will focus on voter concerns
rather than candidate rhetoric. Today, Voices of Florida examines
the lack of confidence in government and how prospective leaders
plan to restore that faith. Here's Concert 90's Bobbie O'Brien.
Florida voters want assurances that the candidates will be truthful.
Elise Mysels, a respondent to the Voices of Florida poll, believes the problem is that the candidates are too far removed from everyday citizens like herself.
"I don't think that the population is as vocal as they need to be. But at the same time, I think if I were a candidate, I'd want to be out there talking to people to see exactly what it is that they're having a problem with."As an example, Mysels, who has worked in accounting for more than a decade, believes the government appears to be on the right road to balancing the budget, yet she questions if it's real or just an illusion created by juggling the books.
"They're trying to fix it for six or seven years, and it's actually a long-term problem. In addition, I don't think they're looking at the entire picture."She says the politicians are too short-sighted to see the big picture that encompasses citizens' everyday concerns, such as Mysels' lack of confidence in the public school system, which forced her to send her son to a private kindergarten.
"Schools are terrible. We need education. We need a lot of emphasis put on education, on crime, the way we handle our criminals -- those two areas are of great concern as a citizen with children. That's one area that has not even been discussed."Mysels is not alone in her dissatisfaction with the political process. In fact - her concerns are held by a majority of Florida voters.
The Voices of Florida poll found 51 percent of voters are frustrated with the political process, and 76 percent lack strong confidence that their elected leaders can solve the problems.
Several of the top republican candidates were asked how they would restore confidence in government.
Senator Phil Gramm of Texas echoed his own lack of confidence, equal to that of voters.
"So if I were saying to people, 'Let me run the federal government as it now exists, and I can do a great job in running it,' I think people should be very cynical because nobody can do a great job in running the government as it now exists. We need somebody to change the government. And I think that's a distinction between me and most of the other candidates -- certainly a distinction between Bob Dole and me."Presidential candidate Senator Bob Dole responded late to the Voices of Florida request for an interview. Saturday night in a 45-minute telephone interview with Voices of Florida partner and Miami Herald political editor Tom Fiedler, Dole said the first thing a candidate can do to restore confidence is to be trustworthy.
Dole believes that above all else the public wants the president to level with them, and that a presidential candidate should not promise anything he can't deliver.
You'll hear few promises from candidate Lamar Alexander. The former governor of Tennessee steers clear of making promises so people aren't disappointed.
That's one of the several steps he would take to restore voters' trust. Alexander offers a similar scenario, however, on why citizens have lost faith in their government.
"The government in Washington has sold us a bill of goods and told us that it would solve our most basic problems for us when it can't: that it would make our streets safe, that it would take care of our parents, that it would educate our kids, that it would take care of the drug problem. The truth is that it can't do that, that only we can. So I think what would help restore confidence in government is to have a president who told the truth about personal responsibility."Personal responsibility is a main theme of several republican candidates, including Pat Buchanan. In addition, Buchanan suggested several specific ethical reforms to restore faith. He offered these examples when asked specifically what he'd done to restore confidence in government.
"I think you can trust a man who takes positions that are not popular, and that are against what the public perceives to be the popular thing to do. I don't think there's anybody in American politics who's taken more unpopular positions than I have. For example, I supported the most unpopular president in history right to the end. I supported the most unpopular war in history, in Vietnam, right to the end. I opposed the most popular war, Desert Storm."Additional stories on other problems identified by the Voices of Florida poll are planned prior to the state republican straw vote.
I'm Bobbie O'Brien.