This got some attention yesterday, but I wanted to add something to it:

But what is most striking about the contest is not just the negativity or the sheer volume of attack ads raining down on voters in swing states. It is the sense that all restraints are gone, the guardrails have disappeared and there is no incentive for anyone to hold back. The other guy does it, so we’re going to do it, too.

Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) as his vice presidential running mate seemed like an opportunity for both sides to pause and reset after one of the ugliest weeks of the year. Instead, this week has produced the harshest rhetoric and the angriest accusations of the campaign. [...]

Both Romney and Obama talk about this campaign being about big choices. That’s certainly true, given the candidates’ opposing worldviews. But fear and anger motivate each side’s activists. Partisans imagine the worst will happen if the other side wins. That, in turn, animates the strategies unfolding now.

I do think it’s true that “all restraints are gone,” but what’s more interesting about that is that it’s Democrats and liberals who are tolerant, if not enthusiastic, of tough-knuckled attacks against Republicans that eight years ago might have sent many to feinting couches. I think that’s the more interesting story here, one I have yet to see thoroughly reported, though one obvious theory presents itself: Democrats are simply furious at Republicans for adopting and out-and-out rejectionist stance toward Obama; for heh-indeeding hateful and easily-debunked conspiracy theories regarding his place of birth, parentage, ideology, and career accomplishments; and for engineering much of the climate that exists today, for the sole reason of defeating Obama. This is a form of blowback, ultimately, and one that is hard to argue isn’t merited by the past few years. And it’s been devastatingly effective in dismantling Romney’s campaign–arguably at this point, it’s merely the crummy economy keeping things competitive for Romney.

The reason why this election is this way doesn’t take much in terms of sophisticated explanation: it’s a close race in which the public isn’t incredibly enthusiastic about either candidate. The basics therefore point to a campaign much like this one. I don’t think it’s illegitimate for partisans to emphasize the consequences of the other side’s victory, it seems just as valid as anything else. Especially when one considers that the likelihood of a transitional next for years is minor: an Obama second term would probably greatly resemble the past two years (not counting the outside chance that Democrats retake the House), and Romney has never shown any taste for controversial, tough-minded stands (indeed, he’s ruled out massive spending cuts right off the bat), so it’s clear that neither side really wants to talk much about what they would do because the answer is basically nothing. Doesn’t mean the choice doesn’t matter–just think about HHS Secretary Rick Santorum getting to write regulations on contraception mandates–but it does inject a dreariness into the campaign, to be sure.

The truth is that the column itself isn’t very problematic–it’s factual, if a bit sanctimonious in tone. But the basic premise is wrong here. The notion that elections ought to be “conversations” with the purpose to educate is seriously misguided. I can see why the fallacy persists, but let’s be honest here. Education is someone giving you something, namely knowledge. An election is someone asking you for something, namely, your consent to exercise power on your behalf. These are separate things, indeed, nearly opposite things. I can see the idea that elections ought to be an outlet for educating voters, what with all that money flying around on media purchases, but that sort of thing would get in the way of the actual things campaigns are supposed to do, which is why it doesn’t happen. Educating the voters ought to be the province of the media, ultimately. That is their job. Possibly the biggest problem with this way of thinking is that the public conversation doesn’t end–if anything, it’s stronger in non-election times than otherwise. Election campaigns actually tamp down on the public debate because they reduce it to a small number of issues that intersect with all manner of PR ephemera and random circumstances, and our grotesquely long election cycles have become a drag on American civil society. For example, marriage equality has made enormous inroads over the past decade, but it hasn’t been due to election campaigns. Instead, personal persuasion appears to be mostly accountable for the shifts. Most other countries are able to handle all this election stuff in a couple of weeks, but America weirdly continues to drag it out for over a year. That should be changed in the interest of democracy, though I have little expectation it will.