Virginia Political Ridiculousness, Afternoon Edition

Vivian Paige, in the context of some shameful personal attacks on a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, says:

The people have been lulled – by their own inaction – into a sense that politics is dirty and that’s just the way it is. But it doesn’t have to be. There are a lot more of us than there are of them. If we wanted to, we could change the way politics is done. But far too many are “too busy” to get involved, the result being the kind of attacks that Pat Edmonson and others experience, attacks that divert the candidate’s attention away from the real issues of jobs, healthcare, education and others.

People like to blame the candidates for the state of politics, but the candidates do it for a reason – it works with voters.  And it takes the focus away from things that are hard: jobs, healthcare, education; and onto things that are easy: playground insults and identity politics.   Now, as a fan of the occasional playground insult, I’m hardly hoping for some idealized world of policy debates (although if it could keep me from ever having to endure another pearl-clutching kabuki dance about how shocked and offended a Virginian was by language, all the while gliding over the ugliness of their ideas, I might sign up).  Rather, I’d like us all to be a little more conscious of our own tolerance for the form-over-substance approach to politics.