Attack of the Hacks

Has there ever been a more negative, dispiriting election? Is there any hope and optimism left in this country, or is our political culture based on nothing but seething dislike and sour resentment?

Democrats and Republicans sought to win voters with the same basic message: You may not think much of us, but at least we're better than the other guys.

Anyone who owns a television or a radio already knows that candidates and parties in this midterm smackdown spent tons more on negative political ads than on positive ones. Every contest seemed to feature a scoundrel vs. a knave, a hack vs. an idiot, a doofus vs. a dolt.

In fact, politicians use so many negative ads because they work. UCLA psychiatry professor Marco Iacoboni described for the Associated Press his research from the 2004 presidential campaign. Using magnetic resonance imaging, he found that when test subjects were initially shown pictures of their favored candidates, an area of the brain associated with empathy lit up. But after the subjects had been exposed to negative ads about their candidates, that same area of the brain failed to respond. Politicians have known this for a long time.

The depressing nature of this endless campaign went beyond negative ads, however. Examine the messages that were delivered by the two parties and then try to find a reason to be filled with hope about the future.

The Republican Party was saddled with an unpopular president who led the nation into an unnecessary and unwinnable war, mocked traditional American notions of justice and privacy, reasserted the powers of an imperial presidency, and generally showed himself willing to disregard objective facts if they were not to his liking. That wasn't much for Republican incumbents to work with.

Still, the party did manage to come up with a coherent message: We might be making a mess of things, but if you vote for the Democrats they'll raise your taxes and let terrorists threaten your family.

The Democratic Party had the advantage of having been out of power during the whole Iraq misadventure, which gave every Democratic candidate an even simpler message to transmit to voters: Look, I'm not George W. Bush.

In terms of politics, that was smart. But "not George Bush" doesn't qualify as much of a vision for America's future. At some point, it can't be enough just to list all the problems the Republicans have created or failed to address. What are the solutions?

It's no wonder that so many voters call themselves independent these days. And no wonder that so many candidates stood out from the pack this year by highlighting the ways in which they departed from the party line -- Republicans who openly questioned the war, or Democrats who spoke about faith and family values.

Americans deserve more from their political leaders than they got this year. The party that gets to define the next era in America will be the party that has a more compelling, forward-looking story to tell than what we heard this year, which was, in a nutshell, "Those other guys are so lame."

Tell us something we don't already know.