Midterm Mud: Making a Mess of Elections

How nasty is politics in 2010?

One telling sign is the shout-out given to Jerry Patterson and Hector Uribe recently by the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News. If you know who these guys are, you're not just a world-class political junkie, but a world-class Texas political junkie. There aren't many elections more obscure beyond the Lone Star borders than for state land commissioner.

What did the News laud the two for?

"These two, both born in 1946, hark back to a time when political rivals could compete for election, yet still be civil with one another."

Yup. They got their very own house editorial (Patterson is the incumbent, a Republican, and Uribe is the Democratic challenger) because they managed to engage in spirited debate without sliming each other into the gutter.

Sigh. Is the bar really that low?

These are surely not the vilest of American political seasons. My memory goes back to "Hey, hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?" And the many "expletive deleteds" from the transcripts of President Nixon's secret Oval Office tapings. Historians will cite actual physical fights on the floor of the Senate, and attacks on Lincoln and Jefferson that make most of the worst of the current political effluvia smell like perfume in comparison.

But it's bad enough now. No kidding, this is an era where news organizations declare a (left-leaning) comedian's semi-joking rally for civility to be a partisan political event.

It's hard to decide how far back to go to set a starting point. The yelling matches at the public meetings about heath care reform that set the stage for the Tea Party? "You lie!" shouted at President Obama during his first State of the Union address? Posters of President George W. Bush as Hitler? Clinton's impeachment?

Regardless of where the recent slide started, we're in the mud now. And no account of this current political season is complete without a litany of some of the greatest hits. What's your favorite?

The "death panel" lie is not only scurrilous but is harder to kill than a cockroach.

"Bretibarting" was introduced to the language when right-leaning blogger Andrew Breitbart distributed a video edited to reverse the meaning of a speech by hitherto unknown federal bureaucrat Shirley Sherrod. The feat was duplicated on the left in one of the worst ads of the season, where Florida Congressman Alan Grayson edits his opponent to reverse the meaning of a religious point.

Joe Miller's Alaska campaign handcuffing a reporter?

Jack Conway's "Aqua Buddha" ad?

So many examples, so little space.

Some folks who study this sort of thing say the current situation is worse than at any time in recent history. (If we go back far enough, incivility, not to mention slavery, actually produced a Civil War here once upon a time.)

David E. Procter is the director of the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy at Kansas State University. He cites several reasons why he believes it really is worse now:

The 24-hour news cycle turns every nastiness into its own reverberating news story. The Internet offers the opportunity to broadcast and enshrine the worst examples as viral videos and offensive blog posts.

And what about those negative ads?

"There have been negative advertisements since political ads came on radio and TV, but every election cycle, the percentage of those ads that are negative increases. Additionally, negative ads used to be primarily issue focused. Increasingly, they are personally focused -- Sen. Smith is a crooked politician, Representative Jones has been at the trough of public money his entire working life, etc. Our research has found that these personal, thematic ads significantly increase the cynicism voters have about their government."

There's your "so what?" Political incivility actually makes it harder to maintain the American experiment of democratic rule.

KRC Research did a national poll about political civility back in April – long before the most recent awfulnesses. Some highlights:

Sixty-five percent said the "the general tone and level of civility in the country" is a "major problem." Seventy-two percent said the problem is getting worse. (And by the way, Democrats, Republicans, and independents generally agreed.)

About half of those surveyed said they were tuning out of government and politics because of the incivility.

Which is not to say that there are not people out there trying to paddle upstream. Heck, I've put up a few posts here on Politics Daily arguing for what I called a "civilogue," an aggressive pro-civility campaign in which those of us who believe in such politely rebuke offenders. See here. And here. And even here.

Didn't get much traction. In fact, I got plenty of uncivil comments and e-mails accusing me of advocating censorship.

I'm not alone in trying to push back, of course. Mark DeMoss heads The DeMoss Group, a PR company that works primarily with Christian organizations, enterprises, and ministries. He's also been active politically, working as an unpaid adviser for Mitt Romney's last presidential bid.

That work, he said, exposed him to just how nasty his fellow evangelicals can be toward Mormons. Ditto with the anti-Mormon attacks from the left in the wake of the defeat of Proposition 8 (the gay marriage referendum) in California.

A couple of years ago, he linked up with Lanny Davis, a Democrat who served as White House counsel under Clinton. DeMoss had seen Davis conducting himself civilly on TV and sent him a note. Eventually, they met and bonded as friends. And co-founded The Civility Project.

Their goal seemed modest: They sent a "civility pledge" to every governor and member of Congress. Here it is:

* I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior.
* I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them.
* I will stand against incivility when I see it.

Exactly two responded: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.).

DeMoss doesn't understand why there's a reluctance to embrace a pledge against needless nastiness.

"I'm not promoting unity. I'm promoting civility," he said.

The project is mostly languishing these days. DeMoss, after all, has a day job. And he vacillates between simply giving up and wondering whether a more aggressive push might not somehow set off a spark.

But his level of despair, a few days before the midterm election, is a measure of how sad things are. Remember that DeMoss is not simply a longtime political activist, but a religious fellow who follows a theology of inevitable failures followed by divine redemption:

"Campaigns have gotten so low, on both sides, " he told me, "that for the first time in my life I'm contemplating not voting at all this time."