Jonah Goldberg posted a press release in The Corner this morning, with a prefatory note:

One day I’m going to write an essay on my — I wholeheartedly admit — irrational and even demented hatred of press releases (I am not kidding. I sometimes personally hold it against people who send me press releases, which I know is crazy).

I don’t think he’s crazy. But I’m going to take this and run somewhere with it that may be beyond what he had in mind: to wit, the broader topic of canned political communication.

I’ve written before about how fund-raising mailers are the ones that get to me most. The breathless “we’ve got to stop the evil liberals” letter, the fake Very Important Survey festooned with fake codes and control numbers and filled with leading questions, et cetera. I actually write back from time to time, telling the parties responsible that I am not willing to give to any outfit that so insults my intelligence. (None of them have ever replied.)

That’s my pet peeve, the press releases are what drives Jonah crazy—but the same thread runs through political speeches, shout-show talking points, campaign ads, and much else. It’s all of a piece, a curious phenomenon of deeply insincere, baldly manipulative non-speech. And it’s choking off sincere political discourse.

There has always been art and artifice in how political figures express themselves, of course; but this is something different, or at least more extreme. It does not come from the pen or mind of any actual political person, but is manufactured by public relations and political communication gurus, making use of their training and the latest focus-group results, but never their sense of right and wrong, or their souls.

It is not political speech, but a simulacrum of political speech. It is the difference between the Lincoln/Douglas debates and “Hannity & Colmes”. And it almost goes without saying that it is all undertaken with a deep contempt for the intended audience. I fervently hope that Peggy Noonan is right in her inkling that a very great number of Americans are seeing right through all this, more and more every day.

To have someone believe in something, and articulate it, is important in politics; and voters who are at least moderately politically-engaged hunger for it ever more. And ever more, they are fed stones in place of bread, with the rise of David Cameron in Britain as the exemplar of this phenomenon. When the leader himself is a PR man, you are guaranteed that there will never be a “there” there. Who the leader is, and what he intends his party to become, will be utterly dependent on the black arts of public relations; his manifesto and his leadership will be all “communication” and no content.

President Bush, God bless him, has convinced me that we should never again let an MBA near a position of great power and responsibility; thanks to Cameron, I can now say the same of public relations men. Give me a liberally-educated person with a soul, an inner compass, and a rich inner life instead.

Any of those intending on running next year?

Eh, maybe I’m just a babe in the woods here; maybe I’m still over-indulging my naive youthful disappointment in the fact that politicians never write their own speeches any more. But I find it ever harder to pay attention to what people in D.C. have to say. They could at least show me the courtesy of saving me time and cutting out the middleman, and just e-mail me the list of key objectives for the week from their political consultants.

“This week Hillary is trying to appear tough on terrorism, while continuing to distance herself from the war in Iraq.”

“This week John McCain is trying to mend fences with religious conservatives, throwing them a small bone or two to be friendly, but not going so far as to identify himself as one of them.”

After it’s all been read and chewed over, that’s all we’re left with anyhow.