I heartily endorse Rick's New Rule. The problem, I think, stems for a lack of substantive reporting on politics. There's this grand Analysis of Nothing. I don't know where the reporters went, but mostly we just get commentary and "insight". There's almost no good comparative detailing of tax plans, health care plans, or other planks in the popular press. Instead we get letter grades of speeches and breathless treatments of ad tactics.
I've long wished that US newspapers would do political reporting even half as well as they do sports reporting. Sports fans in the US get the highest quality reporting of any subject anywhere in the world. It's not just analysis and commentary, but thorough and well-researched establishment of facts, plus excellent summaries of current and past state through statistics, tables, illustrations, and photos. Apply that thoroughness, passion, craftsmanship, and work ethic to political reporting, and the results would be shocking in contrast to the crap we're offered now.
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when I as in 3rd grade at OLG, I was part of a 3 member "debate team" that argued Ford vs Carter - my team drew Ford. I found a US News & World Report, that succinctly laid out each candidate's positions on 4 pages of issues, side by side, contrasting and comparing, item by item. I used that as my "talking points" and won the debate (lost the election).
Nowadays, SO Many Umerikuns eat up the fluff that they are fed as "news", in between tracking Brittney and Angelina. I think the traditional "news" outlets have shirked the mantle of responsible reporting and embraced the "market share percentage". Only place I've seen factual, responsible reporting has been PBS this summer.
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