In the latest Journal Inquirer, Chris Powell has written an interesting column entitled No ordinary murder; and paying for politics and Keith Burris has written a great column about Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy’s qualifications for Mayor. (I cannot find the Burris column online, so I cannot provide a link at this point.

In Mr. Powell’s editorial, he wisely asks, “Why is the murder of Yale graduate student Annie Le an international sensation?” He asks, “Is it the police particularly or the government generally?... Is it the news media?... Or is the public to blame?” He goes on to explore the relationship between these. News organizations and the government respond to the demands of readers and constituents. There are old adages like “if it bleeds, it leads” and “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” come to mind.

Yet what is it that shapes public opinion and leads the populous to demand one thing or another? I have explored this a little bit in my blog post Outbursts. It is the news organizations and the politicians. We need news organizations and politicians that will help us all strive to be better people, to make better demands of our leaders and news organizations.

This leads nicely into Keith Burris’ column. Mr. Burris seems to believe that Mayor Malloy comes closer to this ideal than many of the politicians we see here in Connecticut. He portrays Mayor Malloy as a man who loves the nuts-and-bolts job of being a strong mayor, as a person who is more of a doer than a listener.

So, how do we elect our leaders? In the second half of his column, Mr. Powell talks about what needs to be done to address campaign financing issues here in our state. He suggests that

A system that was more in tune with democracy and that distributed public campaign funds more according to public sentiment might put fund allocation directly in the public's hands. That is, at the beginning of each election cycle people who have registered to vote could be told by mail that the state was ready to allocate to political candidates and organizations a certain amount of money in their name --- say, $30 per voter -- and given a checklist of the candidates and organizations who had registered for public campaign funds and pledged to obey the rules of public financing.

It is a noble idea, although I’m not sure that it would work on a practical level. I would be concerned about the cost of the mailings and the bureaucracy necessary to make such a program work. In addition, it is the early money that is most important and the system Mr. Powell describes most likely wouldn’t get the money to candidates until later in the campaign.

Another complaint of challengers in the political process is that they have a hard time getting the attention of the local news organizations. While it wouldn’t be as significant a fix as what Mr. Powell suggests, a starting point might be to provide a modification to the Electronic Campaign Reporting Information System (eCris). I would love to be able to subscribe to the SEEC Form 1 filings so that any time a candidate files to run for office, I would get an email notifying me.

With such a system in place, I could imagine a great service that the Journal Inquirer and other papers in our state could provide by posting information about the candidates in their area that have filed the necessary papers as soon as possible.

Can news organizations like the Journal Inquirer and politicians like Mayor Malloy raise the level of discourse in our state so that we can elect more effective leaders and deal more wisely with all the issue that face our state, from a high profile murder case like that of Annie Le to efforts to get the State government to spend its money a little more efficiently? I sure hope so.