The long campaign - two years of intellectual bankruptcy

Given human nature, it’s not surprising the long knives have come out instantaneously after the failure of the McCain-Palin campaign.  Never mind that it was not such a huge failure.  When did a party in power get reelected during an imploding economy?  But the race to blame seems especially repugnant this time.  I’m ambivalent about Palin but I certainly think the Vice-Presidential candidate was being polite in calling her anonymous critics “cowardly.”  A better word would be jerks.

Regarding McCain, his post-election behavior hasn’t been especially sophisticated either.  I was always puzzled why he recoiled from discussing Reverend Wright.  It was clearly an issue worth dealing with on an intelligent level. What does it say about a man that he could have remained in the church of such a person for twenty years? Surely something. (Even Jerry Nadler had his justication.)  Whatever it is, it is more important than much of the blather that came out during the campaign from both sides.  For all the time it went on, very few ideas were discussed in any depth at all.  It was two years of intellectual bankruptcy… a kind of a disgrace to democracy.

UPDATE: Sorry to have to subject you to a day of horrendous typos.  I posted this hastily on the Virgin America flight for LAX to JFK this morning before takeoff.  Corrections have been made on the other end.