"What's the Matter With Kansas?"

This is Barack Obama in 2004, speaking about why the Democrats are not universally embraced in small town America where factories are being shuttered and the jobs are being shipped off to China and Mexico.

The question Charlie Rose was asking (and people are still asking) is how come these folks can't see that the Republican party is harming their self-interests with tax cuts for the rich and a wreckless and needless war in Iraq cocked up on the basis of a pack of lies, and which has resulted in $3.40-a-gallon gasoline prices, a $700 billion debt, 4,000 dead, and 40,000 wounded?

Good question!

In fact, whole books have been written about this question; books like What's the Matter With Kansas? and Deer Hunting with Jesus.

Obama has an answer: the problem is that politicians on both sides of the aisle have ignored the economics of small town American, while the Democratic Party has compounded its negative position by not even providing a sop on the cultural side of the equation (i.e. "God, guns, and gays").

Given nothing from the Democrats, the small town folks cling to what is offered by the Republicans: a few pat-on-the-head promises to protect God and guns ... as if either one were truly threatened.

Of course, Barack has been speaking about this for years without a comment from the right or the left (ignore him, maybe he'll go away), which should tell you quite a lot about quite a lot.

This is how it's done in politics now; ignore the 900 times someone has said something perfectly, in which the meaning cannot be distorted, and go to the one time he says it a bit differently, when it can be cut down into a 20-second clip that distorts all meaning, and then pray like hell that no one looks too deeply to see what is actually being said or what has been said in the past.

This is old politics with new technology; the political calculation that assumes the American people can be manipulated like children because we are all too lazy and ignorant to research and read.

Pssssst. Did you know John McCain has a black child?

Pssssst. Did you know Barack Obama is a Muslim?

Pssssst. Did you know that Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster?

Such is what passes for political discourse in America today. Truth is set aside for "truthiness." What we used to call "bullshit" has now been given a new name and a new legitimacy thanks to 15-second Youtube snippets, anonymous bulletin board posts, and blast emails.

And this is to say noting of the politicians themselves who are now instant-experts by dint of their tea-and-cake sessions with other First Ladies, or their photo-ops with girl-scout troops.

And I always say if you want a real expert on foreign policy, ask someone who flip flops on waterboarding and who routinely confuses Shia and Sunni muslims. Good stuff there.

But of course, that is overseas expertise. What about domestic affairs?

Ah well, if you want domestics affairs, two of the three candidates are real experts (::wink wink, nod nod::).

On one side we have the fellow whose personal economic recovery plan depended on beginning an adulterous relationship with the daughter of a wealthy beer distributor whose money he used to launch his political career. As for "big picture" economics, he readily admits he does not know much about that so don't expect too much. That said, he's pretty sure he wants to privatize Social Security, or at least cut back benefits so Social Security can be shunted into the "welfare programs" line for further GOP bleeding and cutting.

On the other side we have a lady who claims she understands the concerns of "the common people" thanks to that $109 million she and her husband vacuumed up in recent years, and never mind the fact her husband invented NAFTA and she herself sat on the board of small-town-killer WalMart. She understands small town America and factory workers, she will tell you!

Does either one of them really want to talk about America's struggling economy? They do not!

Hillary's husband and her campaign manager are still running around promoting NAFTA-like schemes, and John McCain is an open-border free-trade lover whose Hispanic Outreach Director, Juan Hernandez, is actually a Mexican government official.

So no, they don't want to talk about the economy.

Nor do they want to talk about hunting as neither one of them hunts (though Hillary is laughably trying to pull a "Mitt Romney" and claim the title of life-long hunter). Go figure!

Church? No, let's not talk about televangelist John Hagee, which has called the Catholic Church the "great whore," or the other fellow -- Rod Parsley -- who thinks now is the perfect time to launch a global Holy War. And for God's sake don't bring up Maryanne Williamson.

Instead, say McCain and Clinton operatives, let's edit a line or two out of one of Obama's endless question-and-answer sessions and put that up on Youtube completely devoid of context and telling people what it all means. Fox will run it for sure, and then that coverage will create a contrived controversy, and CNN will folllow suit. People are stupid; they'll swallow this, I tell you.

And some have. But not all.

Two days after Obama's "small town" comments hit the news, he was endorsed by the Allentown Morning Call, the main paper serving the economically-challenged Lehigh Valley.

And despite Hillary Clinton's professed deep roots in Scranton (cough, cough) the Scranton Times Tribune endorsed Obama as well.

So we'll see how stupid America is. Like the lottery and smoking cigarettes, this is an IQ test. If we take the bait, we fail.

And of course, we may take the bait. It is not an accident we are in the economic and foreign policy mess we are in right now.

Like the insane, we keep on doing the same thing again and again while expecting different results, and then wondering why it doesn't work out. We reward liars by putting them into higher office, and then wonder why we don't get truth-tellers out of the process

Here's my advice: If you like what we have now, complete with rising war deaths, a rapidly mounting debt, a falling economy, and $3.40 a gallon gasoline, then vote for either John McCain or Hillary Clinton.

If you think we can do better -- if you think we can BE better -- then vote for the other fellow. It really is that simple.

• Read what Barack really said from someone who was there:
  "Clinton, McCain, and media pundits have parsed a blogger's bootlegged tape of Obama's remarks and criticized a sentence or two characterizing some parts of Pennsylvania and the attitudes of some Pennsylvanians. In context and in person, Senator Obama's remarks about Pennsylvania voters left an impression diametrically opposed to that being trumpeted by his competitor's campaigns." >> Read the whole thing.

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