We are hungry to vote for a new President, and for most of us it will be a relief to have the campaign over. The campaign hasn’t really begun in earnest, yet it seems to have been going on forever. It has been an endless run of superficial debates, cheap shots, easy slogans, and ill-considered promises – on both sides of the party divide. And the Republicans, with all their usual clarity and money, have so far failed to stick in the minds of the voters, according to the polls.

This is indeed an election season of paradoxes.

The main cause is, of course, the Iraq War, which has exhausted America’s martial enthusiasm and made our name mud around the world.

The Republican candidates feel duty-bound to support the President and the War to some extent, despite their monumental unpopularity, and so the party’s bellicosity, which usually comes so naturally, is currently uncomfortably worn.

To say that the national discourse has sunk to new lows is to state the obvious, and, I suppose, the inevitable. War rarely brings out the best in politicians, and losing wars never do.
Nonetheless, the country needs to pull up its rhetorical socks and get to work seriously debating real issues. We need to find a way to clean up the mess in Iraq without turning loose the Furies in the Middle East. We then need to turn our attention to some issues that are more important in the long run – the environment, health care, and education – because they will influence the history of the planet in more lasting ways than even the Sack of Baghdad.

If the next President can influence these issues for the good, he or she will be remembered as wise a President and as a great a leader as President Bush was not.