"What did these barrels of money buy? Advertising. But instead of allowing us to get to know the candidates or teaching us about their positions, the campaigns churned out a flood of distasteful mailers and TV commercials that made us keep our fingers near the mute button on the remote. Oddly, only Diane Denish, who lost the nastiest race, seemed remorseful. On election night, she said: “We are in an era of great cynicism. Sound bites and catch phrases without a whole lot of substance behind any of it. The competition of ideas has lost out to the competition of gotcha. We are all – me included – guilty of playing along with it.
“I just hope in the future we can break the cycle of attack-driven politics and have real conversations about what’s important – jobs, economic security, clean air and water, making sure kids have health care and a good education.”
The winners had no regrets. Their trash ads worked."
Elections 2010: An expensive slurry of repeated slams
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