The same man who seldom even attends the state funerals of fallen soldiers and only started attended them occasionally after being roasted by the press for being the first President to not attend them.
Now, I'm no Bush lover or apologist, so I'll admit that if true, it was certainly wrong of him if he had not gone to ANY funerals until there was a stink made about it, bit to fault him for only going o "some" of them is not really fair. I cant imagine ANY president in HISTORY has attended the funeral of ALL of the soldiers KIA during their administration, or has even gone a majority of them. For one, I ind it unlikely it would even be physically possible to attend all of them, and it really isn't reasonable to say he should go to most of them. With 4,000 killed, had he spent a large part of his day at every one of those funerals, or even a majority of them, there would be a HUGE outcry about him being gone all the time, and not getting things done, as too much time would be spent at funerals and with families, as opposed to taking care of the MASSIVE amount of things a president has to take care of daily. I'm pretty sure they have pretty full schedules, and while some things might be able to by ignored, or put off, many cant, or if they were, a lot of people are gonna be ticked that they got screwed, or would feel slighted, that he ignored, or put off doing something that affected them.
I guess my point to this whole thing is that in recent memory I'd like to see a candidate win or lose based on his merits or ideas or lack therefore of them. I'm tired of politics being aimed at the lowest common denominator while using smear tactics to discredit the opposing party. Again this election will be won by the uneducated voter who's opinions are formed from 30 second smear commercials rather than research and an understanding of the actual issues.
I agree 100%, but the problem is not ENTIRELY with the politicians. The voters share a fair bit of the blame for this too, some of it knowingly, some not. Sad as it is, a HUGE portion of the voting public doesn't really CARE about the actual issues, or at least not enough to pay attention to anything for longer than an Email or commercial.They want the info spoon fed to them, and in a sense, want to be TOLD who to vote for, so they aren't bothered by having to take any time to actually thinks, ready, study, compare, etc. They want it to be quick and simple, so the politicians really are often just giving them what those people want. Kinda hard to blame JUST the politicians for that.
Also, remember that the majority of the population has an IQ between 85 and 115, and lets face it, an IQ in that range is just not terribly bright, and then you have to factor in that most people are pretty poorly educated as most attended to seriously screwed up public schools for their education, which have been set up to accommodate those attending with the LOWEST of IQ's, who aren't officially "mentally challenged" enough to be in special classes, thus, even those near the top of the average at 115, were educated as if they had an IQ of more like 75, as that is what the school was designed to do, so as to not leave all those at the lower end behind.
Sadly, the vast majority of people in this country are just not very bright, and are poorly educated on top of it.Thus, the politicians do just what the schools did, and gear everything toward the lowest common denominator, because they ARE the majority of the voting public. If they geared everything toward those with good educations and 150+ IQ's, the outcry would be insane, the vast majority of voters would be disenfranchised, and would either just guess at who to vote for, or would be easily manipulated by those they believe are smarter and more educated, or even worse, would vote for a 3rd person that was willing to still cater to them, and is a WAY worse choice than the 2 who were being more "high brow", but since they are the majority, that crappy, wacko 3rd person is who would get the majority of votes, and thats who we'd be stuck with. Kucinich/Nader ticket anyone?
But, as I feel I am personally above the average in education and IQ, as I suspect a great many people on this forum are (due to our interest in thinking about, and discussing, and learning about law, politics, the constitution, our rights, etc, as opposed to being on the American Idol Forums), I agree with you that I wish our election campaigns did happen like they do, and seem to get worse every time, but I really don't know if it will ever get better. The best we may be able to hope for is that it just doesnt get much worse.
