When campaign time arrives every year, the usual flood of endorsements and commercials come dribbling through the sewer.

Slowly, the voters take sides, fall in line and choose candidates. They fill newspapers with letters of support—or opposition—and decorate their lawns with campaign signs.

This year, something’s different. Spurred by Florida man Jack Gargan, radio pundit Paul Harvey loves it. It’s an idea to vote all incumbents out.

Gargan, who put his life savings into this, must believe it. His organization, THRO—Throw the Hypocritical Rascals Out—puts full-page ads in newspapers across the country, including USA Today and the Chicago Tribune. Gargan states his problems with incumbents and urges readers to send money for more ads.

Judging by some of the ads he’s placed and the notoriety he’s received, something’s working. But many papers refused his business and sent the camera-ready ads back without explanations.

It’s hard to figure where it began. These guys who are supposed to get the boot are the same people who got the nod years ago. Still, people everywhere want to rid the legislative buildings of this country of the apparent clowns that already are there.

The irony is that 98 percent of incumbents will be re-elected. Nearly all will keep their seats.

Apparently, as Gargan would be distressed to hear, most Americans have little complaint with their own representatives. They’ll admit there are problems with Congress and that something needs to be done, but they feel their representatives aren’t causing it and actually might be trying to root it out if another term is in the offerings.

So, they keep their tried and true politicians and expect the rest of the country to make the change. But it doesn’t work, and nearly all the old folks get the OK for another term.

And through all this, the public is subjected to those campaigns and commercials, which continue to get more and more brutal. The reason is, as politicans will be quick to reveal, is that negative advertising works.

It must. Neil Hartigan is calling Jim Edgar a liar. While many people hold the opinion that all politicos are liars, it burns impressions on listening ears when a politican calls another a liar.

Or does it? Consider the commercial against George Sangmiester, who currently is in the U.S. House of Representatives. The ad claims Sangmiester skips nearly half of his committee meetings and surrenders his voting rights to some “liberal Democrat from Texas.”

The problem is the ad says “Sangmiester” so many times, listeners can’t even remember the name of the man who paid for the ad.

It’s out of hand. Until candidates start spending less money (Hartigan and Edgar are spending a combined $20 million) and cut the time of campaigning, they’ll resort to negative advertising, which leaves everyone with bad tastes.

Maybe then, more Americans will agree with Jack Gargan and pack Washington with freshman representatives. But if the current state of affairs is as good as the upperclassmen can do, it’ll be a pretty bleak day.