...John W. McBush has closed the gap with Barack Obama in the polls while running on a platform of Bush 3.0. With nothing positive to say about Bush's accomplishments and his intention to stay the course, it would seem that McCain's heavily negative campaigning and smears-by-proxy is paying off.

Sad, isn't it?

It's tempting to diss the American people for responding more to the low road than the high road, and for general gullibility (a reference to PT Barnum is de rigeur about here). But I look at the context, at politics played out on TV like a spectator sport, and it's pretty clear that Americans have lost a sense of the reality of politics. It's become not reality but "reality TV", and it seems that too many Americans take professional politics no more seriously than professional sports. We've forgotten that we're supposed to be the primary players in the game of government of the people, by the people, etc.; and let professional politicians play for us as proxies, while we add up points on the sidelines. Or, actually, we've become so lazy that we rely on the news media to keep track of the score for us, and then whine about bias when the news media doesn't report a winning score for our side.

I feel better now. Thank you for listening, and Have A Nice Day.