Is it just me or has the silly season of politics become a 365/24/7 proposition?

    It seems that politicians have taken two tacts in communicating with the electorate: spew as much, hate, vitriol and out and out lies about their opponent as they can possibly fit into a 30 second spot or bore the holy bejabbers out of the electorate with how wonderful their husband, wife or mother thinks they are.

    Case in point for the former:  Here in San Diego we have a showboating City Attorney whose antics would provide a good laugh if he weren't so tragic.  He has shown himself to be mean spirited with those who don't agree with him and the upcoming election promises to be one of the most ferocious on record.  His opponent is a long standing nemesis from the City Council who has been openly hostile to the incumbent.  Oh, what a hell of a mud bath this one is going to be.  Silly.     

    Case in point for the latter: again here in San Diego (I don't mean to pick on my hometown, but things HAVE gotten sillier here than most places over the past decade or so) we have a perennial candidate for Mayor who decided in mid February that what this town was desperately in need of was his mug on TV EVERY DAY from then to the June 3rd primary!  Moreover, he has decided that the most neutral spokesperson he could find is his wife.  She assures us that he is wonderful and smart and independent.  Now on the first two issues I am sure she has a firm conviction.  As to the independence, it is hard to conjure up that image in light of the fact that this guy is a multi-millionaire Republican.  Maybe he DOES need all that TV time to explain how to reconcile that dichotomy.  Silly.

    Nationally we have a fight brewing on the Republican side between an old man who wants to recreate the 100 Year War and a guy who wants to declare holy war on anyone who doesn't pray as he does.  The only results of the first 100 Year War was the nobility decided it would be dandy to use the peasants as cannon fodder (sound familiar?) and the Plantagenets got kicked out of France (this may have been the last war actually won by France).  As to the Holy War, why do religious Zealots feel that separation of church and state is a one way street?  Look at those countries that mix government and religion (I don't know, say Iraq?) they have a dandy society, don't they?  So we have Senator McCain who is too liberal for the conservative branch of the right wing party and Governor Huckabee who is too conservative for almost everybody.  It's going to be bolts from heaven against blasts from tanks.  Oh, my!

    It looked for a while like the Democrats were, irony of ironies, going to provide some civility to the political scene.  That was until Senators Obama and Clinton had "Plays nice with each other" expunged from their permanent record.  They haven't exactly slipped into the primordial ooze at this point, but they are on a slippery slope and they both need to wash their hands more often.  This one could be the silliest of all since both candidates have almost exactly the same views, they merely differ on methodology.  We're still going to have to listen to endless debate about the best way to split hairs.  Give me a break!

    Ok, so silly is as silly does.  What can The Rest of Us do about it?  First of all we can stop reacting to the Cult of Rove, or "Rovism".  This is the almost unAmerican practice of character assassination, slander and/or rumor mongering perfected by George II's good buddy Carl Rove.  If you can't beat 'em, lie about 'em.  This tactic appeals to the worst in The Rest of Us.  It heightens our fears, our biases, our prejudges.  Another aspect of Rovism is the mistaken belief that one side is always right an the other is always wrong.  This is patently nonsense.  When did the fine art of compromise become so distasteful?  Since when is working for the common good intolerable?  What got this country where it was a decade or so ago was the ability to come together in common cause and work through our differences.  There are those who will tell you that there is only one way to move forward and that is their way and anyone who doesn't agree or has another idea is blatantly abhorrent to the American Way.  This is not only silly, it is detrimental to a free society.

    The next thing that we can do is heed the advice of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, speaking before the Dial in Dublin, Ireland in June of 1963 "The problems of this world cannot possibly be solved by cynics or pessimists whose horizons are bound by obvious realities.  We need men who can dream of things that never were."   

    We have been taken over by stearn faced cynics and pessimists who tell us that we are headed to hell in a handcart unless we fall into lockstep with their very limited view of the horizon.  We don't need to be told how bad we can be, we need to dream of how good we can be.  A Europen friend of mine once told me that his part of the world always admired the United States because if something was needed, Americans would invent it.  That was pre-911.  Is it that we have reached such a silly season in our society that we have forgotten how to societaly invent?  Have we forgoten that this nation was built on dreams?  I certainly don't believe that we have.

Or is it just me?