The Nixon-Kennedy debates: no better

The Buffalo News, of all places, has a pungent and cogent editorial:

Whatever happened to ideas? They may be there on the Web sites, but they’re largely missing on the campaign trail, where the national media are feeding off personality issues and the candidates are obliging them.
Things like the McCain campaign’s peculiar distortion of Obama’s lipstick-on-a-pig remark — the most over-the-top charge yet, trying to turn Obama’s analogy about McCain’s pledge to change Washington into an insult to Palin — garner the headlines. There’s also McCain’s distortion of Obama’s vote on sex education in Illinois — claiming he wants “comprehensive sex education” for kindergartners when what he voted for in a state legislative committee was a law that would provide age and developmentally appropriate sex education, while allowing parents to remove their children from those classes. The only reference to very young children in that was to provide some education on how to protect themselves from adults who would abuse them.
These are conjurer’s diversions, designed to change the subject — why talk about the economy when you can dissemble about nonsense? — and keep the Democrats off balance, swinging at shadows.
It’s worked before — remember the first President Bush and the Pledge of Allegiance — so it could work again, unless voters take the time to remember that this year, unlike 1988, the country is in far worse shape. Our international reputation is in tatters. The military is stretched to the snapping point. Entire industries are reeling and pleading for taxpayer bailouts. Gasoline costs are undermining the well-being of millions of Americans and the entire U. S. economy. Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.
All candidates exaggerate, of course, and they all go off course in the heat of campaigning. But now would be a good time for the campaigns to get back on track. Major financial institutions are collapsing, unemployment has hit a five-year high of 6.1 percent, Americans’ retirement accounts are taking a pounding with the stock market, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, global climate change is working its destructive ways. There is plenty to argue about. There is plenty of need not just for change, but for ideas. The more specific, the better.

'Conjurer's diversions'— Rico says what a lovely phrase; much better than 'political bullshit'...