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"We are a better country than the kind of debate we're having," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said last week at the "First Draft of History" conference, sponsored in Washington by The Atlantic, the Aspen Institute, and the Newseum.

Speaker after speaker denounced the ugliness that has overtaken American politics. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said, "We have people on both sides making extreme comments and statements. What happens when you do that? You quickly rise from obscurity to notoriety. Some people certainly, understandably, enjoy that.... I regret it."

You can raise a lot of money by stirring up anger and passion.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., complained that Republicans want to turn the Democratic Party into MoveOn.org while Democrats want to turn the Republican Party into talk radio. His response to people who say that President Obama is not a Christian or a natural-born citizen? "Republicans have to say, 'That's crazy,' " Graham said. "I go to town hall meetings and say, 'That's crazy.' "

The "You lie!" shout from Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., during the president's address to a joint session of Congress last month was only the beginning of the latest round of over-the-top attacks. Since then, we have heard Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., call Obama an "enemy of humanity" because he supports abortion rights. We have heard Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., say that the Republican health care plan is for sick people to "die quickly."

It's a rhetorical arms race, and combatants often thrive. The House officially rebuked Wilson, but he raised more than $1 million for his re-election campaign as result of his outburst. Grayson's campaign coffers also began to swell after his charge. His re-election campaign released a statement pointing out that Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., "demanded an apology. The Grayson re-election campaign would like to usher in a new era of bipartisanship by inviting Rep. Price to serve as the campaign's finance director."

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has expressed alarm over the efforts to delegitimize political opponents. It happened to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Now it's happening to Obama. Citing an Internet poll that asked, "Should Obama be killed?" Friedman drew an ominous parallel to the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a political adversary.

Nastiness is not exactly new in American politics. What is new is that it's becoming institutionalized. Money is one reason. You can raise a lot of money by stirring up anger and passion. As Wilson found out, you may be punished, but you will also be rewarded.

Gerrymandering is another reason. Many House members represent districts designed to be safe for their party. "The threat comes from their own primaries," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said at the Atlantic forum. "It creates intractability in politics."

The media also share the blame. "A lot of it has to do with the media, 24 hours a day," McCain observed. "We are now in an instantaneous news cycle."

Axelrod noted, "Every day is Election Day, with that day's poll." Politicians no longer worry about winning the week. They worry about winning the hour. And they can do that by feeding the media's insatiable demand for sensation and conflict.

Mass media are struggling to survive in a world of talk radio, niche cable channels, the Internet, and bloggers. Mark Bowden writes in The Atlantic about "the post-journalistic age" where "work formerly done by reporters and producers is now routinely performed by political operatives and amateur ideologues of one stripe or another, whose goal is not to educate the public but to win." Take, for example, this bit of political analysis by a conservative blogger following the rejection of Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics: "Hahahahaha.... So Obama's pimped us to every two-bit thug and dictator in the world, made promises to half the Olympic committee, and they did not even kiss him."

The United States is now facing several immensely complex issues -- health care reform, the Afghanistan war, and climate change. One speaker at the forum talked about "addressing complexity through thoughtful conversation." The notion sounded quaint. The speaker was the president of a major university. And that is about the only place you might look for thoughtful conversation these days.