Couldn't agree more...

NEGATIVE EXPOSURE

Now that George Bush and John Kerry no longer have to face one another, they have also decided to turn their backs on facts and reasoned argument, as they continue to campaign across our nation's battleground states.

At a rally with the faithful in New Jersey, President Bush attacked Kerry, saying, "In our debate a few weeks ago, he declared when we went into Iraq, there were three
countries: Great Britain, Australia, and the United States. He left out Poland." With that, he gave considerable pause to some undecided polka musicians standing nearby.

At least the senator wasn't resorting to scare tactics, unless, of course, you have ever known an elderly person or a mother. He told the crowd at a speech in Florida, "With senior citizens standing in line for hours, mothers frantic about how to protect their children, the president gave the public his solution: don't get a flu shot." To drive his point home, the senator then sneezed on everyone in the front row.

As it happens, President Bush was also in Florida – there’s just something about that state that makes the candidates want to focus on it - but unlike Senator Kerry, the president decided to let his opponent's own liberal words destroy him, saying, "He doesn't like that label. He dismisses it as just a word. He must have seen it differently when he told a newspaper, 'I am a liberal and proud of it.'" Perhaps it is possible that Senator Kerry could have seen things a bit differently when he said that. After all, it was in July of 1991.

Though the candidates’ sometimes misleading statements of possible fact could be a matter of honest misinterpretation, when it comes to what can only be described as the most egregious lie told on the campaign trail to date, that honor goes to President George W. Bush, who said, "It is great to be back in the state of New Jersey."

Both candidates also invoked the name of an earlier beloved president, although for different reasons. Bush said, "After the war was over, Harry S. Truman, president of the United States, believed that liberty could transform an enemy into an ally." Meanwhile, elsewhere in Florida, Kerry offered, "In a message that was sent to congress nearly 60 years ago, president Harry Truman said, and I quote, we should resolve now that the health of this nation is a national concern." The two candidates then returned to bitchslapping each other after learning that Harry Truman was dead and therefore ineligible to vote.

(The Daily Show Headlines)

Serious political debate is all but dead in the U.S. presidential elections. Here we have two candidates whose greatest strengths seem to be the verbal attacks against the opposite number. Is this the best that the "inspirational" U.S. democracy can dish up? I'm at times horrified by the lack of class in these two candidates.

And then I remember Abraham Lincoln

"Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters."