Feb. 07--What was Mayor Rahm Emanuel thinking when he agreed to five debates with his challengers -- three on broadcast television, two live-streamed on the Internet?
Conventional wisdom is that incumbents with huge financial advantages shouldn't give their opponents exposure and credibility by appearing side by side with them, and that there's no need to risk having an "oops" moment in an unscripted forum, displaying ignorance, irascibility or worse.
Mayor Richard M. Daley heeded such wisdom and never agreed to a single debate during his five re-election bids from 1991 to 2007. We grumbled. We seethed. We railed. But we understood. And he won -- with at least 60 percent of the vote each time.
Yes, Emanuel's popularity was lagging as we entered this campaign season, and he still hasn't cracked 50 percent voter support, according to the most recent published polling. But with some $30 million behind him, he didn't need the League of Women Voters, the editorial boards and other debate hosts to promote his accomplishments and take down his foes.
Why did he do it?
Well, after attending one of the debates and carefully watching the other three (the final debate will be at 6 p.m. Tuesday on WBBM-Ch. 2), I have a theory:
He believed that the best and cleanest way to weaken the diffuse but significant anybody-but-Rahm sentiment among the electorate was to expose those "anybody" candidates to the neutral scrutiny of media cross-examination.
He believed that though these candidates have harnessed the anger and dissatisfaction of city residents living through challenging times, they would not be able to articulate persuasive, comprehensive, realistic plans for managing the array of problems that confront us.
He believed that after hearing his four challengers offer up vaporous and fantastic budget ideas, expensive solutions to social problems and sops to annoyed citizens, even those of us who aren't fully on board with his agenda would grow disenchanted with the "anybody" idea.
He believed that he would not lose his temper, commit a gaffe or otherwise stray from his talking points, thus exuding the air of steely competence that attracted voters to him in the first place.
And if this was Emanuel's plan in agreeing to an extensive and now tedious series of debates, I have to say that it's worked.
His opponents have shrunk in stature and heft at each successive forum. Even though they raise valid complaints about some of Emanuel's priorities and programs, none of these "anybodys" appears to be somebody ready to occupy the fifth floor of City Hall.
It might have been otherwise had Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle joined the race or had the fiery, erudite Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis not been sidelined by health problems
But it was not otherwise.
Earlier this campaign season, I was hoping that Emanuel would be held to less than 50 percent of the vote Feb. 24 so that we'd get a two-candidate runoff race in which the major issues confronting the city would be vigorously litigated.
The debates so far have, however, shown us quite well what that litigation would look and sound like.
And I, for one, have seen enough.
More like this, please
The power of cameras in the courtroom was well-illustrated Wednesday when CLTV broadcast a dramatic sentencing hearing live from the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
In the first test of cameras in Cook County criminal courts, viewers saw gut-wrenching testimony as relatives of slain Chicago police Officer Thomas Wortham delivered their victim impact statements.
It humanized Wortham. It revealed the raw suffering of his family. This record, supplemented by still photographers, served to make real the tragedies that too often feel too abstract.
Re:Tweets
Many of the nominees for Tweet of the Week that I cull from the increasingly vital microblogging site are topical. Four of the 16 finalists this week, for example, were about our latest health scare.
Among the runners-up in the reader voting: "I'm bringing sexy back! Sorry, not sexy, measles," by @TheTweetOfGod; "Our thoughts are with the measles-ravaged country America. I hope we are screening them before they come to Africa," by @elnathan; and, in a current events two-fer, " 'Pete Carroll you just cost your team a Super Bowl. Where are you going now?' 'They're sending me to Disneyland to get the measles!' " by @DonnieSimpson.
And the winner: "If my kid can't bring peanut butter to school, yours shouldn't be able to bring preventable diseases," by @kkjordan.
The analogy isn't exact. Nut allergies can be quickly fatal, and the methods for protecting children who suffer from them are less invasive than vaccinations.
But the central idea, that general health depends on adherence to sometimes slightly inconvenient social norms rooted in science, is strong.
And it shouldn't be overridden by an appeal for a religious exemption.
If a parent were to claim that his faith demands that his child be allowed to eat shelled peanuts in a school lunchroom where students with severe nut allergies were also eating, we would reject that demand of faith and force the child to eat his peanuts in a closet where he'd pose no risk.
But when parents say that their faith forbids vaccinations, Illinois law unaccountably yields to their demand to be able to send their children to public schools nevertheless.
What's even stranger about Illinois law -- which, like laws in every state, allows for medical exemptions -- is that to get a non-medical exemption, the objection has to be explicitly religious and that a "general philosophical or moral reluctance to allow ... immunizations ... will not provide a sufficient basis for an exception to statutory requirements."
Meaning that if you tell school officials that you've thought the matter through and have chosen not to vaccinate your kids, that's not a good enough excuse. But if you say God tells you not to vaccinate your kids, that is a good enough excuse.
In truth, neither one is good enough. The state should not prefer religious notions to secular notions, and our lawmakers ought to take the opportunity of this burgeoning public health crisis to rewrite the law and remove the religious exemption.
Read the Tweet finalists and comment on this column at Chicagotribune.com/zorn
