few months back I took note of how common it is for politicians to promise on the stump that they will “look” at an issue, rather than to say specifically what they plan to do about it if elected. But no one I quoted was as relentlessly speculative as Jason Plummer, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, was Thursday evening when he was interviewed on WTTW-Channel 11’s “Chicago Tonight” program.

 “I think  that you have to look at several things,” Plummer said when host Phil Ponce asked him what, specifically, he thought should be cut from the state budget. “I think you have to look at merging certain programs. I think you have to look at the Medicaid program, I think you have to look at the way that that’s structured. I think we have to look at what I like to call really the um,” Here he paused. “A lot of people say when it comes to Medicaid 10 to 12 percent maybe 15 percent of it’s fraudulent. Why aren’t we investigating that? There are savings there. Why aren’t we looking at programs like the uh—“

What followed was an awkward gap of nearly 20 seconds during which Plummer couldn’t come up with the name of the next program he wanted to look at or even a single word. Ponce tried to help – “education?” he asked helpfully – before changing topics. Plummer went on to finish the interview by mentioning seven more things he felt should be looked at.

In a way it’s the perfect verb for a prospetive lite gov, who will probably spend four years looking at but not touching the legislative process in Springfield, where he will be a highly paid cipher. What possible difference could it make, after all, which “certain programs” he might want to examine for their merger potential?

Still, those running for a real office ought to look at forswearing “look at” statements during the upcoming campaign. Most of them have it it backwards. Look at the issues, then tell us what you’re going to do.