An advantage to living outside the U.S., at this point in history, is the ability to ignore most of the horror of what has become the American electoral process.

When November rolls around?

My plan is to be in Abu Dhabi, where zero U.S. candidates will be running (and re-running) attack ads on local TV.

(I escaped the final month of the 2008 presidential election, too, because I was in Hong Kong.)

Arriving back in the States in August 2012 reminds me that the American political process has become crude and coarse and demeaning, and has been for at least a decade, and more like two. But it also seems as if it becomes steadily worse with every election cycle.

A big factor is the piles of money spent on TV advertising by nearly every campaign from the House of Representatives on up. Nearly all of that money is devoted to tearing down the opposition.

I will date myself here, but I can remember when campaign ads on television actually promoted the candidate who spent the money. As recently as 1984, Ronald Reagan ran a campaign entitled Morning in America that made only oblique references to his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, without mentioning his name, and referred not at all to his 1984 opponent, Walter Mondale.

I can remember when it was considered distasteful to run attack ads, and pundits were keen to note the moment when a campaign “went negative”.

What a concept. Modern campaigns are negative from Day 1.

Granted, U.S. political history shows some really rough campaigns in prior centuries; the campaign of 1828 often is noted for how intensely personal it was.

That campaign, however, was at least partly muted because of the lack of media in the first half of the 19th century. You had a panoply of newspapers, but they came out once a day. In today’s campaigns, you can hear/see the same commercials a dozen times a day on television and in radio and online, and wallow in the same dispiriting memes.

Contributing to the overload of negativity now is the discovery by political consultants that attack ads actually work. Driving up an opponent’s “negatives” is easier and cheaper than increasing your own “positives”.

Certainly, lots of Americans are tired and disappointed by the process as it is now. (And don’t give your own party a pass on this; Republicans and Democrats alike sling mud.)

But it seems almost inescapable, and the length of the U.S. presidential campaign makes for one long, painful shouting match, exacerbated by rabid partisans on cable news networks. (If you could escape it, wouldn’t you like to?)

I plan to vote in the general election, via absentee ballot, even if voting in California is pretty much a waste of time, on the state and presidential level. (Democrats hold every statewide office, and California is now one of the bluest states in the union.)

And I believe I can make responsible choices. Despite not being in the country for the final two months of the campaigns. Or maybe because of it.