Mr. Stosny:
With all due respect, I believe the problem is with your perception of elections, not with Obama, McCain, or negative politicians generally or extravagant campaign budgets. What goes on in elections, from the (probably correct) point of view of all involved, is for the greater good. I believe that if you rethought your position and if you understood this fully, a great weight would be lifted from your shoulders and you would no longer hope for elections to be different than they are. It would be for your own good to see elections in a new light!

Allow me to explain: Have you heard of the prisoner's dilemma? Basically, two prisoners who committed a crime are separated, and they are given a choice--rat on your partner to reduce your sentence. If they both rat, they are both imprisoned, but if one rats and the other doesn't, only the one who doesn't rat is imprisoned. I will leave it to you to look up the complexities of the prisoner's dilemma (perhaps wikipedia) if you are unfamiliar with it, because it would take up too much of my brain power to explain it here.

But basically, you seem to be hoping that one candidate will be the bigger man and refrain from negative attacks. While, in an ideal world, BOTH might refrain, that seems highly unlikely since there are valid negative points for politicians to make about each other. Moreover, like in the prisoner's dilemma, if one refrains from betraying his partner and his partner betrays him, his partner wins and he ends up in jail for a long time.

Similarly, in elections, negative ads, while sometimes doing a disservice to the "truth," are effective. However, if both candidates use them, like in prisoner's dilemma, I believe they balance each other out, the playing field becomes level, and the politician with the best stance on the issues is most likely to emerge victorious.

Similarly, politics is showmanship. While, in private, I am sure politicians have doubts and philosophize about issues, when the time comes to make a speech or debate, they must reduce their positions so that listening Americans can comprehend the "gist", and politicians must present this gist in the most persuasive possible way. If he does not and his opponent does, like in prisoner's dilemma, he appears the weaker candidate, who cannot even present his ideas with clarity and confidence. It's like being the captain of a boat, you must be a confident leader at all times and inspire confidence in your crew or your crew will doubt you and your abilities, they will lose morale, and then they won't vote for you (if captains got elected).

Finally, spending tons and tons of money on elections is good for the economy. That money does not just burn up, but it goes into the pockets of the television stations, for example, when politicians buy ad spots on TV. The television employees, in turn, go out and spend money on things like Christmas presents, groceries, and therapy sessions. The money is more likely to ultimately get to you if it is spent, rather than just collecting dust in some rich dude's pocket. Consumer confidence and high spending benefits us all in the end.

Perhaps the most important moral to glean from this prisoner's dilemma talk is that if a politician sincerely believes that he has the best plan for America, the best thing he can do in an election is to WIN. Now, ethics and (serious) honesty issues aside, my hope for you and for your readers is to understand that a win-at-any-reasonable-cost attitude is worth subjecting America to a little negativity. Especially if America recognizes it for what it is and does not become disillusioned in the political process.

Anyways, hope this was food for thought, if not, I hope you find some other reason to be less bummed about elections!

Technically, I did say serious honesty issues aside...

You are talking about more than just "downright false advertising." You are also talking about "personal and negative attacks," the huge cost of the campaigns, and the partisan politicians' seeming over-confidence in their positions--all of which you claim contribute to emotional pollution.

Character is an important part of being president, as is revealing the truth about the opponent's "positive" advertising with negative rebuttals, and my point about the value and effectiveness of _truthful_ negative and personal attacks, as of now, still stands.

You are blogging about the general problem of emotional pollution from partisan politics, so clearly more is on the table of consideration than simply "lies"--and it is overly reductionist to characterize my entire original post as defending lies.

My points on the cost of the election and the validity, effectiveness, and perhaps even necessity of truthful negative ads and "personal attacks" (because character is an important qualification for president), still stand.

I concede that distress calls may go out to psychologists every election cycle, but based on the wide scope of your article, I don't think even you were claiming this distress is caused purely by falsehoods (which I agree with you and hope they are replaced with truthfulness) but rather is caused by your longer laundry list of "wrongs" committed during campaigns, and to reiterate, perhaps the problem is not the campaigns themselves but a fallacious perception of the value of the campaigns as they are currently conducted--especially considering the effectiveness and the validity of the so-called wrongs.

By the way, having to repeat myself in a discussion is a sign that true communication and understanding is not occurring. Just because you have a PhD after your name does not give you the right to condescend to me and, in ad-hominem fashion, disrespectfully state that I harbor "contempt" for the American people. Talk about emotional pollution and personal attacks!

Thanks for the clarifying response. I think/hope we can agree that even if the idealism you support did help with the problem of people downward spiraling into post-election negativity, the country should take responsibility on their end for how they react to current political realities because, for example, becoming depressed would be allowing our negative reaction to go too far. We do not want to disempower people into feeling that they are unable to stay in good spirits/a good frame of mind no matter what politicians do.

I may have been overly sensitive regarding your comment about my contempt as being ad hominem. In the future, to be safe, you may choose to use less loaded terms, since according to http://www.m-w.com contempt could have negative emotional connotations about the person who has contempt such as them having "strong dislike or loathing" of someone, "condemnation of a thing as low, vile, feeble, or ingnominious (despicable)," and "arrogance and supercilious (patronizingly haughty) aversion to what is regarded as unworthy." A less loaded way to say a similar thing might be "my estimation of the moral standards of the American public is higher than that."

I have worked with a few combat veterans with PTSD co-occurring with substance abuse and currently conduct a CBT group for chemically dependent trauma victims.

If there is post-election stress disorder, I think we need to be careful about attributing causation solely to the environment, the arguments, the ads, etc.. Elections generate a hothouse environment, mostly in the media these days. But in earlier decades, partisans fought with fists and clubs in the streets for their candidates.

Election is ritualized combat that sublimates aggression and domination. Much as we like to think that elections are about ideas and vision, they are overtly about crushing the enemy. I think that any sensible policy that emerges is a miracle

Like actual combat, elections cause intense stress response in the vulnerable. Naturally, those afflicted acutely like to feel there is nothing wrong "inside" themselves. Not unlike the character in Forrest Gump who beats up his girlfriend and externalizes the blame: "It's just this war and that lying son of a bitch, Johnson!"

In my neighborhood -- the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- Obama scored nearly 90%. And of that 90%, the number of people with a sense of humor or proportion asymptotically approached zero. Hey, it's only an election! A ridiculous number of people in my hearing threatened to move to Canada if he lost. I always tried to point out (in the kindest, most therapeutic way) that I was born in Canada and frankly, my compatriots don't want you, but thanks for offering, eh?

What causes people to be so brittle and entertain elaborate escape (and murder) fantasies? Some work on PTSD points to earlier trauma and inadequate coping skills forming a personality less capable of rebounding from stress.

So I guess the real question for me is why do people with these vulnerabilities let themselves become political junkies? They watch MSNBC or FoxNews for the mainline fix (the major networks being too dilute). Is there some dopamine response in them that hooks them and they keep going back for more until their stress response blows out?

In other words, we can't only blame the dealers (the political campaigns) for the dependency, the dependent have to shoulder some of the responsibility.