we ruin them

I just had a thought:

Maybe it's not the candidates who are slimy and pandering and who will do anything to get elected--at least not at first. Maybe they're actually civil servants who want to do some good as they see it.

And then we ruin them.

Douglas Adams: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

Who listens to the attack ads? Who actually decides to change their votes based on them? Who actually gives a crap about what Obama likes to drink at breakfast or how silly John McCain looks in that picture where he's hugging George W. Bush? Who hones in on stupid, insipid buzz words like "elitist" and "flip-flopper?" Who cares more about whether they can "relate" to a candidate more than whether or not he/she is a smart, capable leader?

We do. And that's how we make McCain spew forth Karl Rove crap, and we make Obama "shift" his positions ever so slightly and ever so often enough that we forget what it is either of them used to stand for, and all we're left with is how mad we are at the other candidate. We could have had an election between Bob Barr, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, and maybe Dennis Kucinich. Those guys actually stand for something. But we won't stand for it. We'll believe whatever the TV's tell us, and by our complacency we tell them what to tell us.

I used to have fairly high opinions of both candidates. I'm madder at McCain now because of the base he has to pander to, but overall I've just come back to that old, familiar place of having not much faith in either of them. And at the moment, I'm thinking that it's America's fault.