EDITORIAL: Enduring the election season

Maybe mudslinging has always been at this level in American politics, but it sure seems to be worse than ever.

Perhaps it’s because of the technology. Anything said today has the ability to be recorded, disseminated and responded to before the speaker finishes the sentence. We’re in a world where information is broken into 140-character bites and seconds of video that are long on sparking outrage but devoid of any context.

Indeed, often the goal is to incite, not illuminate; to provoke, not improve. As the Bard wrote in his play “The Merchant of Venice” centuries ago: “The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.”

And nowhere is the case more apparent than in the campaign for the White House, which, barring some unexpected convention upset, promises more and more to be a sparring match between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Unfortunately, in U.S. politics we don’t have a “none-of-the-above” choice on our ballots in November, and it doesn’t look like we can anticipate a third-party candidate to sweep in and garner the support that would be needed to mount a credible campaign. The die is nearly cast.

Frankly, there more to dislike than like about both Trump and Clinton. Trump has been crass and blustery, claiming he will do things like force Mexico to finance a border wall on the Southern border and play hardball with China on fiscal policy. The likelihood of either being accomplished is near zero. Clinton, meanwhile, carries years of political baggage and ranks low on the trustworthiness scale.

Given Trump’s bombastic style and Clinton’s ability to coldly engage in political fisticuffs, this does not promise to be a very edifying fall for the electorate. There shouldn’t be much expectation of learning about national policy ideas from either. Each is most likely going to pander to his and her respective base, painting the other as the devil and making supporters afraid to not vote. And if they can dissuade their respective “lost” voters from going to the polls, so much the better.

It’s symptomatic of what our culture has allowed to happen. We have divided ourselves so sharply that compromise and a meeting of the minds are seen as weaknesses, not a necessary aspect of governing. Too many of us have picked our own highway with our own road signs and anyone who wants to take the road less traveled, the one where a person can critically look at other sides and incorporate good ideas from both conservative and liberal perspectives, is, at best, misguided, and, at worst, a traitor to the country.

Maybe we’re too far down these roads — one to the left, the other to the right — to ever intersect again. There are too many liberals and too many conservatives who believe winning at all costs is preferable, even if you reduce the road to rubble. We’re pretty close to that now, as this year’s presidential election has demonstrated. Much has been made of the “anger” from the right, but there’s significant anger from the left as well. Perhaps we’ll get tired of the animosity one day and rally behind someone who can unify the nation. If that is what results, then perhaps this election season will have been worth enduring.

— The Albany Herald Editorial Board