Despite calling for an end to partisan politics yesterday, U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) criticized what he identified as shortcomings in the Bush administration and the former Republican-controlled Congress during a packed forum at Boston College yesterday.

Kerry said many problems facing the United States today, including healthcare, education, global warming and the ongoing war in Iraq, stem from lawmakers’ failure to work together across party lines.

“Your education costs are higher, loans are higher, [sending] kids to school is harder,” Kerry said. “We have 47 million [people] without healthcare. It’s unconscionable.”

Americans have done little to call for the end to the bipartisan split, Kerry said, even when legislation directly affects them negatively, such as cuts to healthcare and children’s programs.

“Where is the outrage?” Kerry said. “We are cutting after-school programs for children. We are cutting state and drug-free programs for children. We’re about to cut Medicaid for children.”

Kerry took a jab at the news media and said the public gets little credible information because the media have become increasingly obsessed with celebrities and less interested in politics.

“Look at the Anna Nicole Smith week,” he said. “Did that really merit that amount of coverage?

“A whole bunch of people are getting their news from ‘The Daily Show’ and Colbert, and they are great people and funny as hell, but it’s very hard to build [credibility],” he added.

U.S. Sen. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.), who moderated the event, said politics has been poorly affected by negative campaigning, which forces members of Congress to rely on their party base instead of working together.

“The very nature of public campaigns has become so nasty and so vigorous that when they came to Congress, they tend to rely on their own side because they think the other side are devils,” he said.

Rudman suggested elected officials would become more cooperative if their campaigns were publicly financed.

“I’ve never thought the problem was how much money was spent — it was how it was raised,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Mike Capuano (D-Mass.) said, however, spending time trying to improve relationships between political parties on Capitol Hill should not be the main priority of the current Congress.

“If you can’t handle a little name calling, get out of politics,” Capuano said. “I’m not in it to make friends. If I can beat you, I will. If I can get our troops out of Iraq tomorrow, I will.

“If you really want us to get along, expect minimalism, expect nothing great,” he added, also saying too-friendly relations between opposing parties would only make politicians too comfortable.

“I want a divided House,” he said. “I want a divided Senate.”