I recently came back to the US after a short trip abroad, and I was depressed to see that nothing had changed in our dumbed-down presidential campaign.  The media was still breathlessly hyping an upcoming debate as if it were only about "heat" and "trading punches." Guiliani was scoring cheap shots off Romney about a judicial appointment as if he hadn’t had appointment problems of his own.  Is he an idiot?  Why does the media let him get away with it? 

Oh, right.  Because the media has the memory of a terminally ill gnat. 

All of that is depressing enough, but what’s worse is that we have real problems in this country, ones that demand thoughtful discussion and difficult trade-offs and complex resolution.  U.S. soldiers are going to be dying in Iraq for many years.  What do we do about that, while still trying to make some headway elsewhere in the Middle East?  Fifteen percent of Americans have no health care.  When are we going to stop hurling accusations of "socialized medicine" around and help those people?  Have we lost our collective soul as well as our minds?  Our environmental performance is the worst in the world.  We pollute more, use more water every day, waste more energy, than any other country in the world.  When are we going to turn that around?  And, by the way, mitigate our dependence on foreign energy sources?  At least from countries that hold us hostage to our needs? 

And don’t get me started on education. 

The point is, these issues demand real action, and before that can happen, we need real debate.  Not the cheap shots and convenient slogans the so-called debates bring us from sleep-deprived, bored politicians who have traded 30-second answers for months now to no obvious effect on either their polls or the American people’s opinion of them. 

So, what would a real public discourse look like?  Here are a few suggestions.   

It would be partisan, but all parties would respect the facts. We need to get past ideology and hysteria and talk about how to solve problems in ways that actually work.  We need agreement at the outset that spin will be minimized and facts will be honored. 

It would locate the debate at the appropriate level.  Some issues are not presidential issues, and some are.  Why is President Bush helping with airplane congestion?  Because it’s easier to do than, say, help New Orleans?  There are mayors of towns in Texas who are doing more about the environment than President Bush.  That’s crazy.  At the very least, it’s the hard way to solve the problem.  And there are local health authorities who are talking more about AIDS initiatives than the US Congress.  Shame on the Congress. 

It would minimize the ad hominem attacks and stick to the issues.  One of the most distasteful aspects of the current campaign is the vitriol thrown on all sides, but especially at Senator Clinton.  You may not like her politics, but that’s no reason to attack the woman personally.  She has been an honorable public servant for many years.  Despite enormous amounts of energy, time, and taxpayers’ money, no indictable offenses have ever been found on her part.  She deserves better at the hands of her opponents.  Shame on them.  They are not living their own values.