Listening to predictable pronouncements from America’s political leaders as midterm elections approach is a waste of time.

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and their Democratic cohorts will undoubtedly keep reminding potential voters of the Republican party’s record when they ran the country from 2001-07, specifically their fiscally catastrophic distaste for deregulation and their waging of an expensive war of choice while simultaneously cutting taxes. Similarly Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and their GOP cronies will keep on accusing President Obama’s party of being irresponsible spendthrifts bent on crushing America under a massive mountain of debt. And media pontificators on both the left and right will continue to shout whatever message(s) they’ve divined the already-convinced, permanently polarized members of their unthinking flocks wish to hear.

Ignore all the noise. To learn what’s really on the minds of America’s politicians and opinion makers listen carefully for what they aren’t (or are no longer) saying.

Democrats have long asserted that George W. Bush’s presidency was a disaster; they began whining about him in 2001 before he even took office. But they rarely if ever mention it was only after his administration’s incompetence and its ramifications were clear enough for all but the most myopic right-wingers to see (and in rare cases even acknowledge) that elected officials from their party began providing more than token opposition to his policies.

The real proof the Bush presidency was a catastrophe is the deafening Republican silence regarding it. John McCain, who morphed from self-styled maverick to poster boy for opportunism after securing the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2008, ran as though the sitting chief executive was invisible, and every Republican candidate for office since has been so busy fulminating about real and imagined Democratic shortcomings that it’s easy to overlook what they have to say about their party’s last commander-in-chief: Nothing. It’s as though he never existed. True, a few diehards are halfheartedly trying to rewrite history and paint the 43rd president in a more favorable light, but those are people like Karl Rove, whose own legacy will ultimately be tied to Mr. Bush’s.

Craven Democrats have never owned up to the role their own spinelessness played in enabling an entitled, bellicose and arrogant GOP cabal to spend eight years resolutely moving the nation backward. Few of them opposed the Iraq incursion from the beginning, or fought with conviction against tax cuts, which made the unnecessary, obscenely expensive war even more difficult to pay for. While the GOP was using misinformation, fear and ignorance to further their agenda, ineffectual Democrats responded for the most part with collective hand-wringing.

Republicans softened environmental standards, enacted policies that sent millions of American jobs overseas (or eliminated them entirely), pursued unilateralist foreign policies that transformed our nation into an international pariah while simultaneously creating another generation of terrorists bent on destroying us, and nearly toppled the economy in the process. Through all of that the best their cowering opposition could do in response was piously claim the moral high ground for themselves. If timid Democrats couldn’t actually accomplish anything, at least they could haughtily cling to the notion they were the party of integrity and fair play. Self-righteously they sniffed there were no morally bankrupt types like Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Mark Foley, Randy “Duke” Cunningham or Bob Ney in their party.  

Republican talking points today are designed to give the impression Barack Obama inherited a powerful nation with a vibrant economy in 2009, but has been sabotaging it ever since so it can more easily be turned over to socialists. Likewise, Democrats loudly decry Republican obstructionism on a daily basis, or more frequently if they can locate the appropriate cameras.

But just as Republicans dare not mention the name of their party’s last president, no Democrat dares to mention words like “ethics” or “corruption” these days.

New York Congressman Charles Rangel is facing a public congressional ethics trial this fall, and it’s possible similar action will be taken against California’s Maxine Waters. The recently-completed corruption trial of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich provided another black eye for Democrats, as did the revelation that their one-time presidential nominee, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, one of America’s wealthiest public servants, has for years avoided paying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of taxes in his home state by docking his luxury yacht in neighboring Rhode Island.

Given what those on the left and right say publicly (and loudly) these days it’s easy to conclude that Democrats and Republicans have nothing in common. But based on what high-profile members of each party don’t say it’s clear there’s one area where the two groups are similar if not identical.

When it comes to sleazy, hypocritical, cynical, self-serving individuals with a lust for both power and influence, together America’s two major political parties have pretty much cornered the market.

— Andy Young teaches in Kennebunk and lives in Cumberland.