Campaign Limits

Part of the problem with our political system is that with the rapid growth and proliferation of media our political campaign season which used to be a few weeks before the primary and then a couple months before the general, and then our elected officials went back to work; has turned into a constant never ending campaign.
Not only is it all year long during election years, but now it has even expanded into non-election years. Parties and/or candidates that lose an election often immediately start campaigning to discredit the victors and position for the next election.
This inflicts a media storm onto the consumers, but it also greatly impacts the work that our elected officials can do, and greatly impacts any cooperation between individuals and the parties. The constant campaigning makes any true bi-partisan cooperation almost impossible. The first two years of the Obama administration are perfect examples. Republican congressmen who previously supported legislation are now opposed to it, not for any good reason, but just because they're hoping that they can prevent their "opponents" from actually accomplishing anything, or doing anything that might work. Our representatives no longer do whats best for the country, they do what they think is most likely to make their opponents look bad.

The constant campaigning causes both parties and all elected representatives to be much more concerned with seeing their opponents fail or look bad, than cooperating. They would prefer to have something bad happen to the country that can be blamed on their opponent, than cooperate with an opponent and have something good happen for the country. We must end this. We need harsh limits on the duration of political ads, the amount of money spent on campaigns. Maybe political ads should be limited to printed media? TV and radio are too invasive and too addictive and we can't or won't turn them off even when we know we should. Print only political ads would take some of the emotion and showmanship out of political advertising. Its more difficult to trick someone into believing something, or to convince someone of a factless theory on paper, than it is with actors and deceitful or fraudulent images.