Good Post, Steve.

I don't think the reason we see very little policy discussion can be found in a silo. There are many, many reasons within the state of MO why candidates fall back to the lowest common denominators.

The first of which, I believe, is an electorate with an attention span of a two-year old. Remote controls, hyperlinks, blogs (no offense), twitter, facebook, scrolling messages at the bottom of MSNBC and Fox, etc. Our media has built the voting public into a swarm of individuals that can barely stand to read an entire sentence, let alone a whole paragraph and certainly not anything longer than 500 words. As such, candidates need to get their message across quick so that, heaven forbid, Joe Voter gets bored.

Corporations do this in their marketing quite well. Sure, McDonalds could explain all the reasons why a Big Mac is delicous in 500 words or more, talking about the quality of the beef, the ingredients, etc etc. But they know their consumer can't stand to be bothered for more than 2 seconds, so they just say, "bah dah bah dah dah...I'm lovin' it." Why do you love it? When do you love it? For what reasons is "it" supposed to be loved? Nobody cares. I'm lovin' it, so are these other handsome people and you should too. Same thing in political advertising and in trying to get your point across. Joe Wilson could have tried to explain, it detail, how he believed President Obama's remarks were incorrect, but instead he shouted, "You Lie!". Had he explained himself fully, with reasoned arguments people would have changed the channel. Instead, he shouts, and the media replay it. And replay it. And replay it. When was the last time a policy speech got replayed ad-nauseum on the 24-hour news cycle?

Plus, in our media-driven world, blood sells. And since US politicians (for the most part) haven't resorted to fisticuffs, what sells next is the salacious (sp?). Broad, generalized, over-symplified, sensational comments get quoted, they get replayed, they give a candidate name ID. And, here comes Joe Voter saying, "Hey, I heard that guy on TV one day, I think I'll vote for him. Plus, when I heard him, I heard him say "I'm gonna cut taxes." And since I don't like paying taxes, I'm gonna vote for him." Nevermind that the way the guy will cut taxes is on the backs of idiots like Joe and at the expense of Joe's kids' educations.

So the first reason is that people who vote are 1. not brilliant and 2. have short attention spans.

Next reason our political discourse has devolved into a state of slap-fights is political consultants, and couple that with term limits in Missouri, the two feed off of each other. A consultant doesn't have to govern. A consultant doesn't have to vote. Hell, a consultant rarely even has their name attached to anything they do. It's like the kid in the back of the room who shoots spitwads and when the teacher looks back he points to the kid next to him. Only in politics, the kid next to him is the candidate and the candidate can't say "it wasn't me". So, without any consequences for what you say or do, the political consultants stand to make a ton of money, never have to govern and thus coach their candidates to get the sound bite, say what you need to say to get elected, and once you do: "give me a ring in two years with your credit card number handy." With MO's terms limits, it has become even worse on a statewide level, with some candidates spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants for a job that pays $32K/year. And since Reps are always gunning for their run for the Senate and the Senators are gunning for their run for Congress or statewide office, there are TONS of opportunities for a proliferation of consultants. Or, what appears to be happening, the candidates sign on to one of two or three big consultant groups. Then it becomes a fight among the consultant groups who is going to elect their slate of candidates, thus securing more money. At this point policy doesn't even matter, all that matters is getting elected at any cost so that your guy/gal can run again in two/four years and you can get paid.

I'm sure there are many other reasons why our democratic process has devolved into such a low-brow pissing contest, but in my humble opinion: these two lead the charge.

Short attention span voters with little to no desire to get informed, a media cycle that encourages such behavior and an election process that encourages big money and big consultants who are all-the-more eager to feed into what the voters want. At some point it becomes a cycle and grows like an avalanche. The problem is that in the way of the avalanche are real people, with needs, and problems that need solving.

So, how do we fix it? I've rambled pretty long here, but I've got some fairly simple solutions.

1. Get rid of term limits. The best term limit of all is an election. Don't like an elected official: vote them out. That's called democracy.

2. Campaign Contribution Limits with teeth. The only reason consultants can make so much money is that there is SO much money to be maid. Big money = corruption. Plain and simple. You can't tell me that accepting a check of $5K, $10K, $50K or even $100K doesn't buy some kind of influence. Of COURSE it does. You think people are just throwing millions of dollars at candidates because they like their stump speech? BS. They're making an investment and you can be darn sure they want a little payback for their investment.

This is a good start, but I don't know how to change our media culture or the culture of the voter that likes information in headlines and sound-bites. That's tricky. But just like the bulk of the American Public, I'm not big into solutions, I just like complaining about the problem. :)