Morning Despair

Once again, I find myself with little time to post today -- and, frankly, little interesting to say. I suppose I could talk about the polls that suddenly seem to be showing Kerry ten points behind Bush, or link to the articles now openly asking if Kerry can come back, or even ask whether the fact that I seem to see a pro-Bush photo on the New York Times homepage every day is part of a real pattern or just my fevered, paranoid imagination. But all of that's old hat.

Dirty politics once again seems to be winning. A Republican Convention that, by all accounts, was appallingly mean spirited seems to have trumped a Democratic Convention that went out of its way to minimize cheap shots against an Administration that richly deserves them. The punditry will now sit back in their leather chairs and pontificate about how this turn of the poll numbers is Kerry's fault, about Kerry's lack of dynamism, about how Kerry hasn't fought back hard enough, yadda yadda yadda.

I'm getting a bit tired of all of that. Perhaps they're right; perhaps it is Kerry's fault. Or perhaps the truth is a little bit harsher: Perhaps an electorate (and a press) that's moronic enough to swallow every Administration lie, from the Saddam-Osama Shuffle to the Swift Boats, doesn't deserve good government after all.

Take a look at Elizabeth Drew's new piece in the New York Review of Books, where she dissects the 9/11 Commission report, and, unlike so many others in the media, has the courage to conclude that the report -- notwithstanding is efforts to be "balanced and measured" -- actually paints a picture of breathtaking incompetence on the part of the Bushites in the months and days before 9/11. And then take a look at Krugman's piece in the New York Times this morning, about how skillfully Bush has used perpetual warfare to buoy his popularity since 9/11.

Shameless.