Nasty politics: a strategy that really works

If you live on the West coast and you need a new refrigerator or other appliance, hang tight. Help — most likely with a trendily "distressed" look to it — might be on the way.

When the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami hit Japan a year ago, it sucked tens of millions of tons of debris into the ocean. Now, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say parts of the debris may reach the Oregon, Washington, Canadian and Alaskan coasts sometime between a year from now and March 2014.

Already, CBS news reports, a Russian training ship spotted a refrigerator, a television and other appliances west of Hawaii. It may take awhile, but that's what you get for not ordering with expedited delivery.

Meanwhile, methinks a lesson lurks in those waters. While the debris stream bobs along the currents, today's GOP presidential candidates may come to regret the tsunami of negativism they are blowing around in an effort to win the nomination. Some of those verbal refrigerators are liable to get swept up by political currents and bop them in the head later on.

And yet, absent such a tsunami, fair weather voters aren't likely to pay attention. Worse, the slightest little breeze could throw them around.

The writer of a recent letter to the editor in this newspaper pleaded with the four remaining candidates to cut out all the mudslinging. "Rather," he wrote, "each should publicize their own political beliefs, plus the positive things they can contribute to the office of president."

Those are nice, high-minded sentiments. To his credit, the writer didn't call for a return to some halcyon, bygone era, or, as is popular these days, to the way the Founding Fathers did things.

If you want a laugh wrapped in an appropriate history lesson, go to YouTube and search for Reason.tv's "Attack Ads, Circa 1800." You will find an interesting rendition of what a television political ad might have looked like that year, when incumbent John Adams faced Thomas Jefferson.

A sampling: Jefferson called Adams, "blind, bald, crippled and toothless" and accused him of wanting to start a war with France. Adams, for his part, said a Jefferson victory would mean "murder, adultery, rape, incest and robbery" would be openly taught and practiced.