I thought Barack Obama gave a great speech tonight, but it’s just silly for him to claim that he will end negative politics:

I didn’t expect when I ran for president that I would avoid this kind of politics [GOP character assassination]; I ran because it is time to end it … We will end it by telling the truth. Forcefully, repeatedly, confidently …

Andrew Sullivan loved this passage. But to me, it’s absurd. As I wrote last year, there’s no way Obama can deliver on this promise — polarization is not going to go away:

[M]ost of Obama’s appeal comes down to his call for a new politics that is less cynical and polarized — a vain hope. Bill Clinton and many other politicians have called for such a change, and none have succeeded. The underlying structural forces that promote polarization are unlikely to relent. And more importantly, polarization is a two-sided phenomenon. Calling for depolarization once you are president is, in practice, a call for the opposition to go along with your initiatives — as in President Bush’s call to “change the tone” (see All the President’s Spin for more). It’s an absurd promise that no candidate can deliver on…

And as I argued after seeing Obama speak back in November, there’s something vaguely anti-democratic about his promises to end negative attacks and transcend partisanship:

He said the reason he ran for president is to “change politics” — a goal that is, frankly, absurd and borders on the anti-democratic. The forces driving the trend toward increased partisanship won’t go away if he’s elected. Consider the only time in recent memory that the two parties “got along” and “worked together” — the aftermath of 9/11. During that period, President Bush’s high approval ratings silenced dissent among Democrats, providing the context for approval of the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq in fall 2002. It’s not a great model.

To be fair, Obama could be right in the following narrow sense. If he overcomes the negative ads and wins a convincing victory in November, it might help force the GOP to move beyond its aging 1980s template of attacking Democrats as too liberal, elitist, and unpatriotic. But the trend over the course of the campaign has been for him to make statements suggesting that there’s something wrong with partisanship and opposition. After living through the GOP’s efforts to silence dissent since 9/11, he should know better.