Political Pandering Revisited

A few weeks ago, I finally got around to watching the vice presidential debate. I missed seeing it live, so I decided to watch it online. I didn't get very far. After no more than 10 minutes, I was so disgusted I had to turn it off. It wasn't a debate in the true sense of the word. It was just a forum for creating sound bites. Sound bites that the media can play, devoid of context, to elicit a visceral reaction in the viewer. The game the candidates must play about choosing their words carefully enough in their non-answers to minimize the number of damaging sound bites created and maximize the number of good ones.

I'm simply not interested in this game. I'm interested in real issues--like whether we should pull out of Iraq. These issues are not things like, "he's soft on terrorism because he wants to withdraw". It's things like the fact that we couldn't do anything meaningful about Russian aggression in South Ossetia because our military resources are all tied up. And how this is a symptom of a serious lack of tactical options to support important strategic goals.

So I realized that this all goes back to my essay from two years ago. Maybe now that the election is behind us we can get to a discussion of real issues. Although the saddest part is that we couldn't do it when it mattered.