I wish I could escape this feeling but I fear this year’s election could be negative and bitterly contested.

My fear is each day during March and April we will wake up in the morning and the insults will already be flying as politicians attempt to turn voters off their opponents.

It has already begun, if it ever actually stopped. The attacks in parliament are getting a bit more personal and on social media among campaigners they are loud as thunder.

It’s tragic, following the hope and expectation of a new politics that emerged during and after the referendum.

However, as it is evidently business as usual and the dividing lines as tribal as ever, I now fear those promises never really meant too much.

After all, amid the engagement and passion on both sides there was some severe personal abuse and vicious, vitriolic hatred and some of it has endured, grown and become entrenched in certain forms of social media.

One positive that hopefully can survive is the rebirth of the public meeting that continued from the referendum into last year’s general election campaign.

Instead of choreographed, slick TV debates you could stumble into a town hall meeting and come face to face with politicians.

After they outlined their plans for everyone to hear they then had nowhere to hide as the voters could see the whites of their eyes and judge them on their sincerity.

This personal involvement is what can still set the Scottish Parliament elections apart from others.

Months after Scotland decides there is another, more globally important, election which is already getting attention, mostly for wrong reasons.

Looming large is the prospect of a certain Republican hopeful, stoking up, and appealing to, the basic fears and prejudices of many of his fellow citizens.

Staring down the television in the US, beneath the strange hair are the eyes of blue of a megalomaniac and the rantings of a man who doesn’t just want to be President but who wants to rule the world.

That’s why we must reclaim politics from the politicians. It’s not their election, a sport to be relished.

Our Scottish Parliament elections have not yet been taken over by big money and international media moguls.

If politicians begin to turn you off politics you can still take control of the debate.

When the politicians get excited, and they will, or if they overstep the mark with dangerous racist rhetoric, which hopefully they won’t, in this country we can still tell them just you shut your mouth.

Let’s keep it that way.