Not helping.

Anyone not hear about the Reverend Wright this week? I don't see any hands (except my own, on the keyboard, of course). This campaign is beyond inane - too insipid to even qualify as absurd. Does anyone really, really, really care about what Barack Obama's former preacher thinks? Is Wright running for president? Is anyone taking a microscope to the sermons and unrelated public statements of any other politician's spiritual mentors, friends, associates, neighbors, etc.? Has anyone, for instance, taken a close look at Franklin Graham, who offered prayer at Bush's inauguration and lectured us all on being squeamish about the use of nuclear weapons? No controversy there. And if Obama's time on a board with Bill Ayers is fair game, why not Hillary's time on the board of Wal-Mart? After all, Bill Ayers just talked about demolishing things - Wal-Mart has demolished hundreds of small town shopping districts and driven virtual slave labor in the countries that produce the garbage they sell. Is that all good?

Sure enough, the reason you hear about Obama's associations so much is because the Clintons want to return to the presidency, and they want it very badly. So badly, in fact, that they're willing to throw the rest of us under the bus to get themselves there. If they really cared about the relative well-being of working people, they would stop investing so much energy in attacks against their fellow party members. (Not that Democrats are huge champions of the proletariat - just better, generally speaking, than the Republicans.) The Clintons claim that they are only confronting Obama with the kinds of salvos that the Republicans will proffer in the fall, but that is a pretty hollow contention. If their aim - like that of the party as a whole, it appears - is to shut the G.O.P. out of the White House this time around, they shouldn't be ripping other Dems a third corn chute. Campaigning vigorously doesn't mean making Democratic victory impossible, should things fail to go precisely your way... but the tactics they're using threaten to damage both candidates and polarize the party in a way that will discourage turnout no matter who wins the primaries.

Then there's just plain garden-variety demagoguery, like Clinton's adoption of McCain's harebrained gas tax holiday scheme. I expect this kind of idiocy from someone like McCain (pictured here in front of an American flag, by pure coincidence). Clinton's take on it is a bit more ludicrous, because she is playing it as a working man vs. Big Oil issue - i.e. we're going to make the oil companies pay the tax all summer, via a windfall profits tax. My ass. Anyone who thinks that that piece of legislation would pass through congress and be signed into law by Mr. 28 Percent before the annual weekend at Myrtle Beach is seriously on crack. Far more likely is that the tax would be dropped and then never added back again (lest Congress members, facing election, be accused of "raising taxes"). I haven't heard this mentioned more than maybe once since this issue was raised, but the gas tax is a feeble attempt at addressing the actual cost of our car-based economy, with the revenue going to maintaining and repairing highways and bridges. This infrastructure is falling apart now, even with the revenue - without it, the neglect will be considerably worse. And with oil prices steadily climbing, the slight price reduction at the pump will disappear in a matter of weeks, particularly with the summer driving season kicking in.

Long story short, this is all about getting people elected, not making things better. No surprises there.

luv u,

jp