So Glad That It's All Over

"All slander all the time eventually collapses of its own foul weight." Would that this were true...


From today's WSJ.

What makes our politics so sensationally awful is not just the amount of money spent denigrating the category and the profession, but the equally stunning amount of energy that is expended by party apparatchiks to amplify the negative in news-media coverage of politics. And the news media are only to happy to comply. The truth is they can't get enough of it.

The net effect of this constant and unrelenting assault on politicians and the political process is voter resignation and ultimately a kind of doomed acceptance. It must be true. They must all be hypocrites, fools, thieves and scoundrels. They're talking about themselves, after all. It's $1 billion of self-portraiture.

A general rule of politics is: It's not the action, it's the reaction. The reaction to the onslaught is aversion; qualified, capable people avoid politics and the political process at all costs, thus diminishing the talent pool. The New York Republican Party was unable to recruit a qualified candidate for state comptroller, even though the race was there for the taking, because they literally couldn't find a qualified candidate to run. Nor could the Republican Party find a qualified candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. No sensible person would do it. Part of corporate advertising contains a subtextual message; come work for us, we're in an exciting business. We're growing and it will only get better. The subtextual message of political advertising is: You'd be crazy to get involved. It's bad and it's only going to get worse.

One would think that the major parties would grasp the concept that they are destroying the very profession they purport to love, and act accordingly. In the midst of all these negative messages, one would expect to find a broad, thematic campaign that aspired to something bigger than "he voted for toxic waste dumps and against your unborn child." When the Labour Party in Britain finally got tired of losing elections to Maggie Thatcher's Tories, they hired the best advertising minds in that nation to relaunch the Labour Party brand. The results were impressive. Tony Blair rose to power and rules to this day.

But in America, the major parties don't ever think in broad, national terms. They're all tactics and no strategy. They don't advertise themselves at all. Instead, they spend the hundreds of millions of dollars they raise microtargeting supposedly single-issue voters and bombarding them with negative messages about the opposite party's alleged disdain for those concerns. Put more simply, they send you junk mail you don't open, and leave robo-calls on your answering machine that you immediately erase.

Ultimately, the reaction to this ceaseless negative barrage, if it continues unchecked, will be the rejection of both major political parties. As more and more people are repulsed by the political process, their number will at some point reach a critical mass. Americans share two overriding beliefs: Tomorrow will be a better day and the idea of America is fundamentally important. That critical mass will eventually embrace a party of hope and mission. A new political party that speaks to those beliefs will emerge. The alternative, after all, is a new record every two years -- $2 billion of negative advertising, then $4 billion, then $8 billion. All slander all the time eventually collapses of its own foul weight.