My mother always told me “if you can’t say anything nice about a person, then just shut up,” which I still think is good advice.  As a result, it has been painful for me to be in Florida the last few days and watching the attack commercials on TV, leading up to yesterday’s Republican primary.  As a whole, they have been brutal, deeply personal and intellectually offensive.

If I still had kids at home, I would be indignant they could watch this behavior on TV.  Such diatribes should be late night and only on cable. 

I already had some reservations after the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court to allow unlimited money into the election cycle.  But, my respect for conservative intellectual George Will is so great, I deferred to his absolutist argument that freedom of speech should not be constrained by money.

After seeing the impact up close and personal here in Florida, I’ve changed my mind.  Freedom of speech does not permit yelling “FIRE” in a public theatre.  Freedom of speech does not permit someone to give pornography to children.  How then can we excuse the behavior of ad-men airing such commercials?

Certainly, it has been written many times that negative campaigning works, but the effect of Citizens United has been to unleash a tsunami of deeply personal negative advertising. While that was an unintended consequence of the decision, it has clearly been a consequence of now permitting unlimited money into American elections.  Another consequence is that there is now unlimited money to convince people of all ages that politicians are all slimy crooks.  Is that good for the country?  Isn’t there more to life than merely electing a particular candidate?

I dread the fall campaign.  Whatever happened to intellectual debates, like the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, when important things were argued.

The good news is that it will all be over in nine months . . . before it starts again . . .