Nasty Ads Keeping Good People Out of Politics?

There is a piece on the Opinion Page of WSJ.com talking about all the money spent on negative ads this year. I know I speak for everyone when I say I am glad those ads, the phone calls, and the junk mail is over. I literally got 2-3 pieces of mail and 1-2 calls every day for the last several weeks from Bill Clinton, anti cloning, and other interest groups.

The author suggests that one of the effects of all the negativity is this: "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 subtextual message of political advertising is: You'd be crazy to get involved. It's bad and it's only going to get worse." It would seem that this is true--just look at who is in Washington. Its no wonder to me, why so many Americans are now calling themselves Independents. We now have two Independent Senators. The two parties are, to quote the article, "spending 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."

We need reform. Some have suggested banning commercials all together by the candidates, but that simply lets the hundreds of interest groups spend the money and air the commercials. The bottom line, to me anyway, is that most Americans fall somewhere in the middle on the political spectrum, and all the people on the fringes spending the most money are ruining politics for everyone. We are getting more polarized and divided, in a time when we desperately need to be united.