The two parties are still more polarized than ever before and the rise of partisan media is an important reason for it.

I'm an independent. I'm a centrist. A new generation is arriving that has grown up with a multiplicity of choice in every aspect of their lives, and yet politics is the last place that they are told that they should be satisfied with a choice between brand A and brand B. It doesn't fit the way they think. It doesn't fit the way they live.

What might be good for ratings can be bad for the country. The hard-core partisans are self-segregating themselves into separate political realities. But the majority of Americans are starting to wake up to the game.

I believe that the far-right and the far-left can be equally insane - but there's no question that in the first years of the Obama administration, the far-right has been far crazier. In part, this comes from parties being out of power - without the responsibility of governing to ground them, the activists and the ideologues take over.

The American people are smart. They've gotten sick of the predictable hyperpartisan talking points and canned anger.

The two parties are still more polarized than ever before and the rise of partisan media is an important reason for it.

But in his Farewell Address, George Washington made it clear that he perceived no greater threat to the American experiment than a partisan demagogue who 'agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against the other'