Politics is now a permanent campaign that has become the primary source of entertainment for far too many of us. How is it that so many have now lost the plot?

There was a time when insiders handled the campaigns, from candidate recruitment to positioning those candidates for a retail campaign. When I was cutting my teeth in this business almost four decades ago, there was a saying that “voters don’t start to pay attention until after Labor Day.”

The advent of 24/7 cable news channels and then instant social media opinions by everyone at all times moved us to permanent campaigns. “Influencers” dictate issues that receive attention. Those people who used to vet and recruit candidates are now called “the establishment” or “the swamp” and have significantly less sway on who will appear on a primary ballot, much less a general election one.

Over this same time period, tough issues have been replaced by vibes. Not everyone can have an informed opinion on the effect of accelerated depreciation for investments in research and development, but everyone can quickly galvanize around reports of affairs, or a debate over which party most closely emulates Nazis. We’ve dumbed our campaigns down so that everyone can have a participation trophy.

We’re now a couple of weeks from yet another of “the most consequential election of our lifetime”, and a lot of people are getting nervous. Nervous people often do stupid things, and this general time before an election is often called “silly season” as a result. Roughly half the country is about to find out they’re not going to get their way, and the coping from nervous folks on both sides has already begun.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the supposedly fair and impartial newsrooms of our country’s largest media outlets. Two of them with a left-leaning tilt – the Washington Post and the L.A. Times – declined last week to endorse a candidate for President.

This didn’t sit well with many of their own and other reporters, who took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to bleed their less than impartial feelings for all of us to see. The net summary of most of the venting was that it was clear by these fair and impartial observers that Donald Trump is a fascist and the opinion arm of their outlets needed to reflect this fact that they’ve been reporting for almost a decade, but somehow the public just doesn’t get it yet. Surely an Op-Ed two weeks from the election would wake everyone up, right?

The best lesson I was ever taught in politics was given to me by a co-worker, learning about the candidates right before she went to cast a primary ballot for Governor. She asked me to remind her which candidate wanted to eliminate Georgia’s income tax.

I knew this person well. She was our office’s ethical straight arrow, and a compliance offer. A prior career in the Navy gave her a no-nonsense call to duty that remained with her personally and professionally. I took a breath and replied to her, “You don’t want to vote for him. He’s an ethically challenged mess, likely to be indicted soon.”

She listened to my longer explanation patiently, and I only barely detected her eye rolls every time I told her what a horrible human being he was. She kept asking about the state income tax. I kept emphasizing his ethical and moral failings. “You can’t vote for a crook!” I summarized.

She took a deep breath, looked me square in the face, and said words that every person trying to influence elections needs to understand. “Charlie. They are ALL crooks. I want to vote for the crook that’s going to lower my income taxes.”

A lot of us think we know what is best for the voters. Too many believe if we can find fault with one side, voters will see that choice as unacceptable and default to the other candidate, who must be better.

Both parties have chosen difficult paths to win the White House this cycle. An accomplished Covid-era Republican Governor would be winning in a landslide right now. The Democrats could have run a competitive primary without a clearly incapable incumbent in the way, and would be soundly defeating Donald Trump right now.

Instead, we have one known and one still largely unknown candidate – both of whom have amazingly large percentages of the voters who find them unfavorable. But our media outlets are pretending that if we just are reminded one more time how much former President Trump is a bad man, that will fix everything for their preferred candidate.

Voters want inflation under control. Voters want an immigration system that works. Voters want our allies supported and our enemies contained. Voters want good schools and safe streets.

Voters continue to roll their eyes and wait patiently for us to understand that. Instead, we continue to pretend that vibes are an answer to their very difficult and pointed questions.