in summary

Yesterday, the NYT’s Jim Rutenberg wrote a nice, straightforward description of campaign ‘08 as it stands in mid-July [e.a.]:

Every presidential election year, the nominees of the major parties vow to run cordial campaigns only to behave otherwise when the battle finally joins.

This campaign, though, had held out more promise than most previous election cycles to be something different, with two candidates whose pledges to change “politics as usual” have been central to their political identities. Mr. Obama has regularly inveighed against “all the petty bickering and point-scoring in Washington”; Mr. McCain, whose bus and plane are streaked with the words “Straight Talk,” has talked about running “a respectful campaign,” what he has called “an argument among friends.”

But roughly a month into the general election campaign, the Obama and McCain campaigns are already locked in a minute-by-minute fight, trading advertisement for advertisement, sound bite for sound bite, press release for press release — and, yes, insulting name for insulting name — with rhetoric that can be as harsh and misleading as that of any previous campaign.

At play, beyond real policy differences over major issues like taxes and Iraq, is a fierce competition to win the moment in a hypercharged news environment driven not only by cable and the evening newscasts but also by the scores of Web sites that now cover politics by the minute with screaming headlines attached to the smallest developments.

This description seems to suggest that the new media has somehow changed politics. But Rutenberg takes back the suggestion a few paragraphs later:

The tone of the discourse seems to carry risks for two men who in part became their parties’ presumptive nominees by speaking against partisan bickering, said Matthew Dowd, a former strategist for Mr. Bush. …[T]he campaigns blame each other for setting a combative tone that makes turning down the volume the equivalent of unilateral disarmament. … The force behind some of the harder-charging rhetoric may be no different than what prompted allies of John Quincy Adams to run searing attack pamphlets against Andrew Jackson nearly 200 years ago: It works.

Yeah, I suppose it does, on some level. Works to what end, though?
To a win for your political party?
Well, rah rah rah.