Our toxic political zeitgeist is driving the national divide

Something to consider as we head toward the presidential election:

Barring some kind of paradigm-changing, cataclysmic event, [pollster John] Zogby sees the election and its outcome in almost apocalyptic terms.

"Welcome to the Armageddon election," Zogby says. "I've never seen anything like it. We're partisan and polarized and in two warring camps."

Zogby likened this year's election to the watershed election of 1800, which saw President John Adams lose to his vice president, Thomas Jefferson. That election was so divisive - Adams was demonized as a "royalist," while Jefferson was reviled as "an atheist and a whoremaster" - that Americans would call the presidency of James Madison, who succeeded Jefferson, the "Era of Good Feelings."

Today, after years of growing polarization, the next president - whether Bush or Kerry - will face another historic opportunity to reach out to the other side and attempt to begin a period of healing, if not "good feelings." But at this point it is difficult to see the losing side accepting such an olive branch.

But at some point we must find accommodation as a nation - even unity. I am as certain of this one thing as John Zogby is of the outcome of the election.

If we remain divided, we will fall. And hard.

This divide has been bothering me for years.

Much of the prevailing political divide has its roots in Bush's narrow win in Florida in 2000; much else of it has to do with the Republican attempt to impeach Clinton in his second term, driven by the pugilistic realpolitick of Newt Gingrich. Many liberals still dispute the legitimacy of Bush's victory and resent the Supreme Court for stepping in and ruling in such a way that Bush was able to take Florida, just as many conservatives still revile Clinton for his peccadilloes.

I'm not convinced that Kerry can win the election. So far, he has been unable to get a message across or even to appear as charismatic -- but the growing sentiment against Bush may be all that he needs to win.

We'll have to see what happens, but I do hope that the talking heads in both the GOP and the Democratic Party will be able to treat one another with at least the modicum of respect that's due them as human beings. I don't recall much nastiness in the Reagan races. Quite the opposite. When Mondale tried to make an issue of Reagan's age. Reagan responded with aplomb: "I see no reason my opponent's youth and inexperience should be held against him."

Despite his use of racial dog whistles and other shortcomings on civil rights, I don't recall anything in the Reagan campaigns like the loathsome and racist Willie Horton ads that Lee Atwater's team threw against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election, or the negative tone of George H.W. Bush's re-election campaign.

The negative, personal and extremist language of the politics has to stop. It's divisive, it leaves voters disenfranchised and it discourages meaningful participation in a democracy. 

It's probably going to be even worse this year since neither major candidate is particularly inspiring to the general public, however they may appeal to the core constituents of their own parties.

Hopefully Kerry and Bush and their campaign managers will take high road this time around, instead of the win-at-all-costs road, and we'll be able to survive this election with our wits and nation intact.

And while I'm at it, I'd like a pony ...