In real life, pols are more vacuous than vile

The Star Tribune Editorial Board, you may have noticed, has made its 2014 political endorsements. Having played a small part in that process, spending weeks interviewing Minnesota's esteemed elected officials and their challengers in Tuesday's midterm election, I feel duty-bound to refute the caricatures you've seen in this campaign season's negative attack ads.

Our political leaders are not all predatory pirates, self-dealing plutocrats, partisan fanatics and befuddled bumblers.

They're not really as interesting as that.

In truth, those who rule us — or would like to — mostly strike one in the flesh as well-meaning, usually smarter than average and almost always equipped with the gift of gab to a fault. They have varying levels of knowledge about government and the world beyond.

But it's frankly hard to gauge the quality of their thinking, because beyond a few well-rehearsed "talking points," nearly all of them recoil from clarity and candor the way a cat recoils from a bath.

The mystery is why they want these jobs so badly — jobs whose pursuit, at least in a closely divided state like ours, seems to prohibit them from saying what they really think about many subjects that presumably interest them more than they interest most people.

We all, if we're prudent, bite our tongues often enough — about our bosses, colleagues or subordinates, say, or about our neighbors, kids and spouses. But on politics we can at least sometimes fully speak our minds, running no costlier risk than sounding like a fool.

Repeatedly this fall the Editorial Board has heard that "everything is on the table" in the search for solutions to funding challenges facing the federal or state budget, Social Security, Medicare, transportation or whatnot.

Evidently, an overflowing negotiating table is considered safely noncommittal by political strategists.

But when you ask a politician for clarification as to whether this cornucopia of options indicates willingness to consider a type of policy that members of his or her party usually reject — tax hikes, say, or benefit reductions — an exhausting chase is apt to follow through a foggy backwater of evasions and half answers.

"Well, not very much," one lawmaker finally told me after several rounds of asking him — in vague and soothing language, I thought — whether he was open to tax-side adjustments as part of Social Security reform. I gave up and took "not very much" as a breakthrough.

A more merciless editorial board in Kentucky created a sensation this fall by exploring the outer limits of political self-parody. With video camera rolling, the journalists repeatedly asked Alison Lundergan Grimes, this year's Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in their Republican-leaning state, whether she voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Political careers apparently have compensations, because the candidates battle fiercely for the privilege of bearing the indignities of high office. We can hope that one of the attractions is the possibility of helping to accomplish something beneficial. Politicians really aren't the scoundrels and lunatics they're made to play on TV.

Tuesday's election could have significant consequences without having significant meaning. Nationally, Republicans clearly have a shot at grabbing control of the U.S. Senate. But this is mainly the result of a fortuitous lineup of races produced by the Senate's staggered terms — that is, more vulnerable Democratic seats are on the ballot than Republican ones. There's little sign of a mandate for sweeping change in the making.

Should they win full control of Congress, Republicans will be stuck with it and will have to decide what to do, with 2016 presidential politics swiftly intruding and dominating. Two years of Benghazi investigations and veto showdowns would serve no one — although watching Democrats rally around the filibuster as a bulwark of fairness and tradition might prove entertaining — especially because the lineup of Senate races come 2016 is unfavorable for the GOP.

A Republican Congress would be better advised to defy expectations and try to work with Obama — on tax reform, maybe, or immigration, or compromise improvements to Obamacare. They must show that they can make a deal.

Meantime, in Minnesota, the highest suspense Tuesday may concern whether the GOP can win back a majority in the state House, ending the DFL's one-party dominance. If they fail in this, in a year that should be good for them, Minnesota Republicans will have some soul-searching to do.