Who's on First?

So, the Dems want to claim that Kerry has all the right answers. The Repubs are shooting for a Bush that's on fire but not all-consuming. The pundits are all looking for THE TRUTH with every major news site claiming a fact checker or at the minimum a reference to factcheck.org. What the heck is really going on?

For the majority of this election process, if not all of American presidential elections, it feels like we're watching a ping pong match between two candidates that we don't even know--all we know is that one wears blue, one wears red, and we have a favorite between the two. When are the politicians going to put down their ball-knockers and start telling it like it is? And, more importantly, if they do decide to play honest Abe with the public how will we be able to put them to the test?

The Nation recently published an excerpt from a piece by Eric Alterman worth reading. The main gist of the story is that the political system in a democracy is predisposed to hiding information from the public, and that the only way for that to change is for either a)the politicians to start telling the real truth or b)for the public to wake up and understand that reality is often more complicated than we might like to believe. Alterman details how it is usually in the politician's best interest to fib outright and deal with the consequences in the distant political future.

People...this has got to change. My biggest fear is that despite all of the gains the public has made in recent years in bringing forth a critical voice to the current administration, once a Kerry administration takes office that voice of critique and skepticism will simply fade into the background. Will it be a relief to have Dubya out of the picture for the next four years? In my opinion, yes. But the real test will be how and to what extent the public engages the next presidency. The level of civic discourse and participation has got to go up, or else we'll always be stuck with "more of the same."