Second, are US voters so lazy or ill-informed that they’re willing to swallow campaign propaganda hook, line, and sinker? The internet makes fact-checking so easy these days — meaning that chances are, someone else has already done the work for you, and their results are posted somewhere online. But I suppose that charisma still counts for something as well, and people tend to be swayed more by emotionally-charged words than cold, hard facts. More’s the pity for the future of our country.

Third, party platforms and personal policies aside, I think what worries me the most about politics these days is the willingness of some campaigns to resort to fear tactics in order to increase their voter support. People can point fingers at each other and debate endlessly about who’s more “patriotic,” but personally, I can hardly think of anything less patriotic than undermining the very basis for our democratic system. We should vote because we support one ticket over the other, not because we’ve been cornered there out of fear.

In the midst of our current financial situation, my mind keeps returning to FDR who took office in the shadow of the Great Depression and whose New Deal reforms (though still controversial) brought the US back from the brink of fiscal ruin. In his now famous 1932 inaugural address, FDR reassured the American people that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” In his 1941 State of the Union FDR also the “four essential human freedoms,” which included “freedom from fear.”

Don’t we have a responsibility, as citizens of a democracy, to hold our leaders accountable to such democratic ideals? We should not put up with emotional statements that brandish the threat of “terrorism” to scare voters. And as voters we should be sophisticated enough to see through such statements.

An hour after the fact, mass media is all over the spectrum — let me point out first that I think it’s rather absurd say one or the other candidate “won” the debate. After all, it’s not a first-past-the-post kind of thing. The goal is to garner support for one’s ticket, and we won’t know who did the best at that until November. Overall, I think Biden walked out looking more intelligent, while Palin was the most animated and “normal.” Of course, that depends on how you define “normal.”

I could go on about foreign policy (which means a lot more to me than special education or even domestic drilling), but this commentary on Fox News’s online forum really resonates with me:

Gov. Palin was clearly prepared by sticking to her script and not answering direct questions. It will make her and Senator McCain’s base happy but I think that it will not move the middle. Most Americans are wise to avoiding answers. Senator Biden was smart, cool, very human and direct. Call me an elitist but her use of folksy English drove me crazy. I think a potential Vice President should be a model with their speech.

I’m not sure I’d agree with the commentator’s description of Biden as “very human,” but I do think that Palin’s “down-home” way of speaking would really start to get to me after awhile. On the other hand, when was the last time I heard Cheney speak to the media?

Oh, and NPR said they didn’t get the Obama lama song (their website links to the first one below). I guess their writers aren’t familiar with random YouTube culture. So if anyone from NPR stumbles across this, here’s a crash course in the lama song:

• Lama Song (this is the original song all the parodies are based on)
• Yoda Song
• Harry Potter Song
• Frodo Song
• Sammy Song