To get back to the OP…
Too many Americans are self-absorbed and are idiots when it comes to politics and current events. They are who the talking points and attack ads are for.
They are the target of the latest democratic effort to associate President Bush with the word “draft”…the purveyors of that effort knowing that they are being intellecutally dishonest, but hoping to drive the idiots to the polls in a frenzied effort to keep their children (or themselves) snatched from their beds by the Bush “war machine”.
This is the example that is currently top of mind for me. Both sides play to the idiots. They have to. Less than forty percent of eligible voters cast a ballot, and I would suspect barely half of them have a clue about what’s going on. The other sixty percent of the population can’t be bothered to hang up the cell phone or tear themselves away from Jerry Springer long enough to pick up a newspaper and read it.