I had an interesting conversation at work recently with a woman who was once on the editorial board of the largest newspaper in the state. As a former editorial writer, she obviously stays up on politics and current events, both local and nationwide. So it was interesting to get her perspective on the direction of politics and government leadership, and whether the press and the pundits are helping or hindering things.

Like myself, my associate is troubled by some of the current trends. The Obama Administration and the Democrats seem to have overplayed their hand; the “national political consensus”, which gave them control of Congress and the White House in 2006 and 2008, was not as liberal and big-government oriented as they had hoped. And yet they acted as if there had been such a mandate. They are now being attacked for this by their opportunistic opponents, just as they had opportunistically attacked the Bush Administration and its Congressional supporters when the GOP majority was vulnerable. What goes around comes around, and the Democrats are not doing a good job of defending themselves. Pelosi, Reid, Dean, Frank, and almost all of the rest seem a bit like deer in the headlights. The ones from the redder states (including possibly Harry Reid) will be the first casualties.

To some degree the current political angst stems from the economy, perhaps the worst economic situation the USA has faced in 80 years. But then again, FDR and the Dems survived a worse situation from 1932 to 1940 (that is, I hope it is worse; we’re still not sure if we’ve hit bottom yet).

On the other side of the coin, my associate agrees that the Republicans have done much better as political sharks than as problem solvers. They have been infected by the Tea Party virus, which is pernicious in offering false hope thru sloganeering and scapegoating. They traffic in ideas which discontented people want to believe, ideas that make sense so long as you don’t think them through. The extreme example of this was Germany in the 1930s. (Neither my associate nor I accuse the Tea Party of being Nazi’s; but they are in some way using political tactics that were well exploited by the Nazis in their rise to power). At best the Republicans are the party of “no”; only the Tea Party / Sarah Palin wing is putting forth any real ideas forward, and those ideas can be quite scary.

However, my associate did hold some regard for Congressman Paul Ryan, who is putting out some thoughtful if not fully ingenuous ideas on what to do about our huge overspending problem; at bottom, Ryan is still a GOP politician. But he seems to be offering much more than the typical Tea Party nostrums.

And finally, as to the press — my associate did not spare judgment, despite having been a member of the “fourth estate”. She feels that the public needs to be engaged in on-going conversations and debates about long-term issues like the deficit, Social Security, Medicare, health care costs, education, energy, job creation, etc. And many pundits and editorial writers stress that in their opinion columns. And yet, the papers and websites and TV news shows where they present such opinions keep focusing on the splashy issues, pandering to the American public’s short attention span. Instead of helping to keep the public’s attention focused on health care or foreign policy problems, the press puts most of its energy into crime, celebrities and short-run social controversies like the present dust-up over the Park51 mosque proposal for downtown Manhattan. That’s what gets the most viewership and sells the most ads. That’s what maximizes revenues. And that’s what drives our politics today.

So no wonder our country is politically split down the middle and can’t seem to find ground for compromise, consensus and action anymore. Politics and the media have been “supersized” through technology (i.e, the 24 hour news cycle, the internet, video cameras everywhere, the use of lawyers to get maximum “spin” while saying nothing, the use of neuroscience and psychology to maximize emotional engagement and response with messengers, etc.). Many people are making money and becoming powerful and famous, and the public is drinking it up. But the public will get stuck with the hangover (e.g. high unemployment, lower incomes, lower standards of living).

It was soon time to get back to work and stop our interesting chat, but my office associate was certainly concerned about where America was headed given the dysfunctional-family relationship between politics and the media today. I’m obviously not the only one who is worried.