Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin

[maddash]

Elections have become battles of attrition. Although it's partially understandable, as people want to see how candidates handle themselves under outside pressure and scrutiny. But I agree that it's just become downright silly.

[ghostrunner]

I don't care for Clark's premise there. It's fair to a point, but putting aside all of McCain's time in service and on related committees is like saying Senators can't be good presidents, again because they don't have executive experience. I've seen that argument made (in essence) the last few elections. McCain at this point definitely has the experience edge across the board, to the extent that it matters.

Clark apparently also made some comment that the naval squadron McCain commanded wasn't relevant because it wasn't during wartime, which is just foolish.

[GatewaySnayke]

I'm really trying to stop watching FOX News, but I can't. The sensationalistic bullcrap is too good. It's funny and maddening at the same time.

[G. Keenan]

I'm really trying to stop watching FOX News, but I can't. The sensationalistic bullcrap is too good. It's funny and maddening at the same time.

You should just stop watching all cable news. It's just a waste of time.

If you get BBC America you should watch BBC World News America though. Matt Frei is awesome.

[GatewaySnayke]

Clevername, I told you this would get out of hand. Media Matters' front page is covered with the MSM completely ignoring what Clark said and twisting it into something different. Even Brian Williams, who I like a lot, screwed up.

It's amazing how stupid journalists are.

[clevername]

at this point I doubt the on air personalities actually read a whole lot about the story. It's fed to them as their own talking points by the producers (who probably know jack squat about the real story themselves) and they regurgitate it. The ones on the 24 hour live networks then make it worse by trying to ask questions of each other and speculating based on their limited knowledge of the actual issue.

Williams is supposed to be pretty good, so that's surprising, but I'd believe anything that the talking heads on TV are reported to say.

[lukethedrifter]

I recommend becoming completely cynical and realizing that the great majority of the people are just like the great majority of modern TV journalists in that they care very little for getting to the truth and care quite a bit for having something to rant about.

[Cole Burns]

Why do these campaigns have to be covered as a series of gaffes and "scandals"? I realize that they're way too long, so you need to come up with things to talk about, but I'm really tired of the repetitive sequence of, "So and so said something. Let's all trade talking points about whether we should be outraged about it." The least we might hope for with such long and expensive campaigns would be for the public to know what the candidates stand for by election day, but we fail miserably at that.

I think it's because McCain and Obama are so close on most policy issues that there is little to separate them. Therefore, each campaign (or party rather) has to focus on minutiae to show their candidates distinctions. And that's just a maddening dead-end.

[Arthur Dent]

Primary season is over:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/04/opinion/04fri1.html

[GatewaySnayke]

Whoa, the New York Times is pissed.

What were his faith-based initiatives? I didn't catch anything about that.