Roberts, Orman agree on little

Though the candidates’ aides would beg to differ, the only clear winners in most campaign debates are the voters. But in Wednesday’s final face-off between Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and independent challenger Greg Orman, the battle-hardened Capitol Hill veteran again was eclipsed by the new guy with the appealing if vague call for actual problem solving.

Viewers of the Wichita debate, whose sponsors included The Wichita Eagle and KSN, saw two candidates who agree on little except that the current Congress isn’t working.

Roberts’ deep knowledge and experience showed in the discussion of foreign policy. And he took full advantage of the question about abortion in a way that many Kansans surely appreciated – and that noted the likelihood abortion rights are not settled law, as Orman said, but will continue to be the subject of legislative debate and judicial review.

But in emphasizing again and again the potential importance of the race to the control of the Senate and direction of the Congress, Roberts had little positive to say about what ideas or leadership he’d offer Kansans in a fourth term. That should be the primary concern for voters.

Roberts blames President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and, inexplicably, Orman for everything – mentioning Reid more than 20 times and Obama at least 19 during the debate. But is blame all he’s got?

Roberts couldn’t even come up with something nice to say about Orman without adding a jab at his business record. A consistent theme of the campaign, it’s enough to make a voter wonder: Does the GOP admire successful job creators or not? Or only the ones who will pledge allegiance to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., which Orman won’t?

Nor did Roberts work in any rebuttal to Orman’s reference to this week’s troubling revelation that since 2000 the senator has missed two-thirds of the meetings of the Senate Agriculture Committee, a panel Roberts hopes to chair if the Republicans retake the Senate.

Yet it remains hard to take the measure of Orman, who has donated to both parties’ candidates and says he voted for Obama in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. It didn’t help that in parts of the debate he again nearly recited the copy from his TV ads.

Orman has many reasonable, well-founded proposals on specific issues. But depending on how other races around the country end, his ideas could be irrelevant.

At least Kansas voters had one last opportunity to hear directly from the candidates, side by side, in a campaign that has become an unrelenting TV ad war mostly underwritten by the nation’s special interests. Here’s hoping they use the information provided to vote in the best interest of Kansas.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published October 16, 2014 at 7:07 PM with the headline "Roberts, Orman agree on little."