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SALT LAKE CITY -- Not being an early primary state, we in Utah have been spared (for now) from the ghastly torrent of attack ads unleashed in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
While people say they hate negative political advertising, it persists, simply because it works. One would hope that a candidate would try and raise his or her poll standings by some method other than lowering their opponent's, but this is the age in which we live.
So now the question becomes, at what point does the tone of political discourse -- the messaging and rhetoric itself -- become an issue? I would argue that it already has, and not only is it a legitimate issue; it could very well be the issue.
We're not just talking about the 30-second radio and TV spots that call an individual candidate's character into question. We're talking about the whole unremitting, absolutist nature of the language used these days by nearly all partisans on all sides of the debate.
Look at it this way: most polls show the biggest concern among Americans is the government's inability to deal effectively with important problems like health care, the national debt or immigration reform.
I would suggest Washington is paralyzed precisely because it is polarized. And that polarization is caused and perpetuated, at least in part, by the nature of the language used on each side. It is the hardline, black-and- white, "you either agree with us or you are dangerously wrong" language that seems to reduce every discussion to an oratorical standoff.
When rhetoric gets more strident, the middle ground disappears. Substance gives way to ideological "talking points." The players repeat their mantras and retreat to their corners and sulk. Any effort at compromise is condemned as betrayal or surrender.
And so they squawk like angry birds, trying to knock each other off the perch.
The subject of just how toxic the rhetoric has become surfaced recently in an extraordinary interview - really a debate masquerading as an interview - between Jon Stewart, host of the Daily Show on Comedy Central, and Sen. Jim DeMint, the Republican Tea Party icon from South Carolina.
The subject was DeMint's new book; "Now or Never," in which he argues America is in an urgent battle between "collectivism and freedom." The book apparently offers no quarter for Democrats. It argues a second Obama Administration could result - literally -- in the dissolution of the Republic.
Stewart is smart, acerbic, stridently funny and quite likely left-leaning.
Throughout the 30-minute exchange, Sen. DeMint is calm, articulate and accommodating. He comes across as more than reasonable - displaying the demeanor of a Southern gentleman that Stewart points out is at odds with the tone of his book.
