Today's Extreme Partisan Politics is Bad For American Democracy

I am glad to see that this will be an intelligent, thought-provoking debate. But I must take issue with your claim that dissatisfaction is the driving force behind the dismally low amount of Americans taking part in the democratic process. Since the 1960's, negative campaigning has grown exponentially, with attack ads and smear campaigns giving voters a negative impression of the political process as a whole. Television has been the greatest contributor to the rise in nasty campaigning. National news has brought once hidden aspects of campaigns into the light. Deception and manipulation are as popular in today's campaign ads as claims about a candidate's policies and leadership skills. Negative campaigning has been around since the early 1800's. However, as one-time presidential speechwriter Richard Goodwin puts it, "you can't compare a nasty quote about Thomas Jefferson with the intensity and penetration of today's attacks". It should come as no surprise that in a culture which laps up sensationalism, candidates have an easier time tearing down their opponent's image than talking about their own platform. But as these attacks grow in prominence, the average voter has become weary of hearing about political campaigns. According to a poll conducted by the Kennedy School of Government, "Americans who believed that negative messages are a defining feature of U. S. elections were less likely to discuss the campaign and to pay attention to news about it" (. http://hnn.us...). When voters turn their attention away from campaigns and politics, voter turnout inevitably suffers. In your first round you claimed that "A recent case in point is the 2006 elections where the Dems inferred an end to the war, but have failed to deliver once they won control over the congress. " By your logic this should have hurt the Democrats in terms of voter confidence and the number of people who support them. But statistics show this is not the case. Polls show that the Democrats are far more satisfied with their party than they have been in the past, and are much more satisfied with their candidates than the Republicans (. http://www.cbsnews.com...). Just as telling, polls show that the large block of Independent voters plan on voting Democrat this year (. http://www.desmoinesregister.com...). The Democrats' failure to bring about the change they promised doesn't seem to have hurt them any with the voters. While I agree that the disenchantment of the American public is a problem, this debate is about partisan politics. In another study done by the Harvard's JFK School of Government, it was found that Americans who believed that negative messages are a defining feature of U. S. elections were less likely to discuss the campaign and to pay attention to news about it, even when levels of income and education were controlled. Our nation has become so divided that we are willing to paint people who disagree with us as either knuckle-dragging, racist, NASCAR-obsessed, gun-fondling, inbred, religious nutjobs, or godless, unpatriotic, Communist, tofu-loving pedophiles; depending on which side of the spectrum you happen to be on. It's impossible to imagine the leaders of the two parties sitting down and sharing a drink, like Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill used to do. Instead of offering bipartisan solutions, the two sides offer up slogans like "Hillary is the antichrist" (. http://mediamatters.org...), and "Bush is the greatest terrorist in the world" (. http://www.msnbc.msn.com...). It is no wonder people are tuning out. Today's political atmosphere must change in order to get more Americans involved in the democratic process.