It has been a little more than a week since the candidates for president and their supporters flooded Iowa for the first-in-the-nation caucus. Building up to that historic night, it was impossible to escape the coverage of the candidates and the points they belabor during their rallies.

All of that time paired with the ongoing mad scramble for the New Hampshire primaries and following caucuses and primaries makes it easy to assume that we now have a pretty good grasp on what the candidates are all about. But how much can we really know when the candidates use their time in the limelight that is supposed to be slotted to talk about their platforms to bash each other into oblivion?

This campaign season has taken a turn that we really haven’t seen in this country, at least not to this height, and the negativity of it all has overshadowed the candidates’ individual goals for America. While a campaign is a fight for attention, it’s not about who screams the loudest but who has something to back it up. At this point, the screams are overwhelming and are bringing more attention to eccentricities than valid points to be elected.

To a certain extent, one can see the logical progression and drive to bring out the big guns in a political campaign because a recent CNN/WMUR poll determined that 30 percent of Republicans and 16 percent of Democrats hadn’t yet settled on a candidate. Percentage-wise, that is a huge chunk of voters who are available to be snapped up by any of the camps, which is what is most likely the inspiration for some of the exchanges we have seen during the past week or so.

We’ve of course been hearing shots fired from Donald Trump — because that is what he’s best at — but candidates such as Jeb Bush are not taking their comments lying down this time around.

“You’re not just a loser. You’re a liar and a whiner,” Bush said in reference to Trump’s reaction to the Iowa caucuses. Chris Christie has also taken his turn to bring down Republican front-runner Marco Rubio a peg or two by saying during Saturday’s GOP debate that “when the lights get that bright, you either shine or you melt, and we can’t afford to have a president who melts.”

Sorting out all of the insults between candidates would simply take too much time, but a full explanation isn’t warranted because it’s common knowledge that this race for the White House has gotten ugly.

While insults and slams draw voter clicks and media attention, they don’t help the American people determine who should get their vote. The next president should be ruthless in his or her policies to improve America’s standing rather than ruthless toward their colleagues.