Campaigns And Policies

Mel Martinez says Romney will flip-flop on immigration. If he's right, many will focus on Romney's repeated flip-flops. But what caught my eye was the following perplexing and disconcerting thought:

"KEYES: In the primaries, he was advocating a position of self-deportation. Do you think he’ll stick to that?

MARTINEZ: I don’t think so, no I really, really don’t. I think that campaigns are not the best place to make good policy, and primaries are probably the worst place. "

What a strange idea. If campaigns are not the place to lay out policies, then why have them at all? And how else will we learn about the candidates? How can we hold them accountable to their promises when they get elected? After all, Romney doesn't have much of a record on immigration. What else besides campaign promises do we have to go on? It could be that Martinez means that there is a lot of work to be done crafting the details of what will become actual legislation which cannot be addressed in campaigns. But it sounds worse than that. It sounds like he's saying it's a mistake (!) to articulate your position on policy during a campaign. Bizarre! I wonder how many candidates think the same way...