What makes the 1988 campaign so relevant today is that Obama and Romney are the first pair of presidential candidates since Bush and Dukakis who behave as if politics are beneath them. Watching Obama you have the sense that he would rather read a book or a stack of position papers than spend three days on a bus touring Iowa. Romney seems to have two styles as a candidate–stiff and wooden. Although their backgrounds are diametrically different, both Obama and Romney appear to wish that the keys to the Oval Office were awarded after acing an exam or honing an oral argument rather than mastering the messy populist rituals of the campaign trail.

Without an inherent respect for politics, Romney and Obama are not afraid of dishonoring its traditions in the quest for power. Romney, in television ads that he authorized and in speeches, has repeated the blatant falsehood that Obama has enacted a plan “to gut welfare reform” by removing its work requirement. Obama’s favorite Super PAC, the only one that he encouraged his donors to support, has been running on the web a deceptive ad in which a laid-off steelworker blames Romney and Bain Capital for his wife’s death from undetected cancer. The story is sad, but the woman died five years after the steel plant closed and had health insurance for part of that period.

America in 2012 faces problems of unprecedented complexity, from the moribund global economy to a never-ending shadow war against terrorists. But our political dialogue seems to ban any thought more complex than can be expressed in a 30-second attack ad.