Election day is two months away. The candidates have been campaining for over a year. A few issues are being thrown around from time to time, but for the most part nothing of importance is on the table and we are about to elect a President the way we vote for American Idol.

The best indication that American political culture is on the level of Saturday morning cartoons is John McCain's selection of an obscure vice presidential candidate. Obscure is OK as far as it goes, but this choice was obscure for a reason. Someone must have told McCain that he needed a woman on the ticket to pull in Hillary Clinton's supporters and also that his running mate has to be a far-right winger, and a flat-earther wouldn't hurt ("global warming is not a problem"). Sarah Palin is apparently the only politician in the country who fits the description.

Whatever your feeling about Obama, we can all agree that he's no idiot. He taught constitutional law, and that's good enough for me. The Bush administration is routinely violated the Constitution, and even the conservative Supreme Court has several times overturned on constitutional grounds the administration's bogus military tribunals to try suspected terrorists. This is a big deal, as the Supreme Court normally does not like to second-guess the President on war and peace and national security. This and other examples of lawbreaking (such as wiretapping without a warrant in violation of U.S. law) makes it imperative that a true thinker occupies the Oval Office, not a dimwit n'er do well like George W. Bush or some fuddy-duddy who's still fighting the Vietnam War (John McCain). Obama's running mate,

Joe Biden, has also taught constitutional law and chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee for many years, vetting Supreme Court nominees and standing up to Ronald Reagan's extremist nominee, Robert Bork, in 1987. Imagine, two thinkers on a national ticket. two guys who know what the rules are and how not to break them. This is not to glorify Obama and Biden, but at a minimum they seem competent.

That cannot be said for the McCain ticket. Choosing Sarah Palin was a sick joke. He did so to prove a point: that this fuddy-duddy can work with right-wing extemists, too, and that he is hip enough to run with a woman who can raise kids and shoot moose at the same time. What makes this choice so shocking is not the political calculation but that Palin is an airhead, a former beauty queen who does not read books or much of anything else. We know this because her first televised interview (after the McCain campain kept her away from the press for two weeks) shows her to be uninformed but quite eager to spit out talking points and other things she memorized during her two-week training period. Her job was to look cute, call the interviewer "Charlie" throughout the session and talk the right wing talk that will keep the Republicans excited.

The worst comment she made was to denigate experience in government: "We’ve got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual and somebody’s big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state." What is she saying? Better to have no experience at all? The anti-intellectual tone of Republican politics has hit a new low.

So shallow are the people who are excited by Palin. The Republican base loves her, but Palin's interview was pathetic. The interviewer asked if she agreed with the Bush Doctrine. If you follow politics, you know all about the Bush Doctrine. Every President has a foreign policy doctrine. What made Bush's unique is that he overturned decades and decades of U.S. policy against pre-emptive war. The Iraq war changed that, tearing this country apart, killing thousands, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and ruining our efforts to really go after the terrorists who attacked us on September 11. Political thinkers have argued about the Bush Doctrine, but Palin has never heard of it. This was apparent from her answers and facial expressions. Rather than answer the question, she went off on some rehearsed answer about how American fights its enemies and if elected everything will be wonderful. The interview was very painful to watch, and I'll link it here if you can stomach it. More of the interview here, equally sad, and full of cliches.

So we have hit rock bottom in American politics. Rock bottom. Another consequential election and a 72 year old Republican nominee with health problems has chose a potential successor who can't answer basic questions about foreign and domestic policy. Take someone off the street at random and that's McCain's vice presidential pick. We've had bad vice presidents before, like Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle. But nothing like this, and even more shocking, McCain is running neck and neck with Obama. I always knew the day was near that political culture in the U.S. would hit bottom. Still, it feels funny to be there.