[BlueStar]

From the Omaha World Herald...

Dangerous liaisons

Democrats attack Terry fund-raiser

By using Madonna to raise funds, Terry handed a freebie to his opponents.

It's almost mystifying that a politician as experi- enced as U.S. Rep. Lee Terry, having positioned himself as an advocate of cleaner television fare, would pull the dunderheaded stunt of harnessing a Madonna concert as a fund-raising vehicle for his re-election campaign.

Talk about mixed messages. Talk about handing your head to your opponent. About the only explanation that makes sense is too far-fetched to entertain, namely that someone in the Terry camp felt sorry for the Democrats' haplessness in engaging Terry in past campaigns and decided to toss them a freebie.

Which, of course, the Democrats grabbed and exploited. This, in turn, led to further campaign fodder for the Democrats when Terry's people lamely tried to argue that television is one thing, public concerts quite another. As if Madonna had never scandalized a television audience.

Or maybe Terry was trying to make inroads with younger voters by buying up a block of tickets for the singer's upcoming concert in Washington, D.C.

This road, too, leads nowhere. You don't win the affection of younger concert-go- ers by reselling tickets to high rollers at $1,500 a whack.

(One suggestion, made in fun, was that the Terry campaign was providing cover for longtime Republican contributors to attend a potentially racy event. But surely there are less risky ways to reactivate the regular donor pool.)

The high cost of running for public office is one of the darker aspects of modern politics. The resulting pressure to keep the contributions churning sometimes leads to bad decisions, as the 1990s visitors log in the Lincoln Bedroom amply demonstrated.

But at some point in all political careers, a learning curve kicks in, with Precept No. 1 being that you don't manufacture campaign issues for the other side.

When this precept is ignored by an experienced campaign organization, questions of political acumen, to say nothing of judgment, invariably arise.