One of the things we have to decide in this country is whether we want to make decisions about our future based on facts or based on misinformation and lies. Now, for most politicians, the only thing they care about is being elected. So, while most (not all but most) avoid actually lying, they are generally OK about misinformation that puts their opponent in a bad light. In fact, they can sometimes further parlay it by saying something like "I'm not going to discuss the rumor about my opponent" seeming to take the high road but not taking a stand that clearly ends the misinformation.
You may feel that all is fair in love, war and politics and as history is written by the victors, maybe winning isn't the most important thing, it truly is the only thing. Of course the only way to fix this would be for the voters to recognise the lies and misinformation and demand honesty for their votes.
Sadly, I don't see a lot of that. What I do see are rumors circulated by third parties, clearly affiliated with one side or the other, that take on a life of their own even when clearly wrong. For example, a recent article in the NY Times showed that 95% of Americans did not realize that the stimulus package included a tax cut in the form of a tax credit. Even sadder was the fact that commenter's to that article assumed it was a liberal lie and accused the writer of trying to deceive them. Now, however you feel about the NY Times, this article presented something that was easily verified to be true, yet at least half the readers refused to accept a verifiable fact.
I see more and more of this and don't know if it is simply the short attention spans Americans seem to have or the fact that we have purported news stations that gain viewers by being confrontational and outrageous. Recently some one sent me a video where a women on the fox network was attacking a representative from CAIRN about their reaction to the NPR person who was fired. She was strident and offensive and responded to a question posed by the CAIRN representative by saying as the anchor she got to ask the questions, not him. Really? And this person passes as a news person? Not being a regular viewer I don't know who she is but I'm familiar with her style of false outrage and misinformation. Sadly, it sells and appeals to people who are angry over the state of the economy.
Of course the fact that the policies that pushed the economy to where it is today are more the result of Republicans than of Democrats, although bought share the blame, is mostly ignored. We have allowed open borders, a Republican ideal that will lead to jobs being exported and products being imported. That path leads to unbalanced trade, a huge deficit and high unemployment. We have succeeded.
I almost never see this discussed because neither party wants to address these issues. The America I grew up in was wealthier than most of the rest of the world. If we equalize trade and open our borders, the inevitable result is a decline in the American standard of living as this situation corrects itself. The best one could hope for would be the rate of change being slow enough that the world catching up doesn't lead to major disruption here. This is not what is happening.
There are things we need to do to fix this, but the policies that would correct it are closer to Democratic policies than they are to Republican policies. We can give big corporations large tax breaks and those who have the requisite skills will see better opportunities for employment, higher stock prices and a continuation of the growing inequality between the rich and poor in this country. For most of the unemployed Americans who are so angry, manufacturing is not going to return, but they may be able to find low paying service jobs.
Yet it is these very people whose anger is going to elect the people who really don't care about them at all.
Ironic, isn't it?
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