I hope everyone realizes what they just said was utter bullshit.

it's just like they're saying nothing, i just dont know what to believe anymore. i wonder if they actually believe in what they're saying. if they wanted to debate things - they would, but still the people at the top would just do what they wanted. i hope they debate more anyway

The problem with them debating is you learn personal motivations and reasons behind policy actions, once outed as what they really are no one would support them, thus we have perception management and public relations.

This talk to most people would seem totally on the button - "the public in general are too stupid to provide proper insight to events, leadership is important". Our entire administrations stance over the past few years has been we are right and you are all wrong, admission of failure or even compromise does not exist in their vocabulary, they are at a point that a admission of a mistakes means a invalidation of everything they have said up to that point. That is not a political option.

In our age of public perception and management, we no longer see what the candidates stand for or who they are in the crux. The media is open for sale. The alternative media is never paid attention to, no one watched PBS. And any criticism can be spun anyway you want in today's day and age.

When they make a speech it's often there is a speech writer behind them, certain key words they think one should hit, 9/11, freedom, tyranny. When they campaign, its polling numbers and perception and issue management, read any of Karl Roves ideas and you will see that. They go for voter gut reactions not appealing to their reason and intelligence. They work in the domain of fear politics, because a population in fear is a population under control.

Of course nothing is bad, this only leads to guerrilla and independent media, most people I know forgo the media in favor of choosing their exposure from a multitude of sources from a variety of different professional fields, from defense to economics and others. The internet is a prime example, there is far more discourse between people then attack politics. The attack politics comes from a few singular sources well known by everyone (left and right), the rest represent the people.