To use a play on Winston Churchill's cynical words, the best argument against democracy is a five-minute perusal of election coverage. Another way to put it - at risk of sounding trite - is if it weren't for nonsense, it wouldn't make any sense at all. Yet, if being trite were a sin, most presidential aspirants would languish in political purgatory.

First we have the bromidic bilge about change. You can bet your withholding tax that the Democrat candidates were programmed to pepper their speeches with the word in a measure as liberal as their politics. Tell certain constituencies you're a change agent - even if the only thing you change is your personality - and the idiot vote swoons.

Change isn't by definition good; it's just by definition change. One-hundred years ago, Russians' dissatisfaction with the Tsar led them to roll the dice. Things couldn't get any worse, many thought. So they made a change.

And the communists took power in 1917.

Then, if your child's diet yielded vigor and health, would you place him in the hands of some guru promising ambiguous change? Wouldn't you demand specificity?

In C.S. Lewis' book The Screwtape Letters, written from the point of view of a demon bent on undermining civilization (a perspective much like that of certain campaigns), the chief demon Screwtape instructed (I'm paraphrasing):

"Change is supposed to be a means to an end, but we have to convince people that it is an end unto itself."

Many have been convinced. And, for sure, mentioning it incessantly has become a political end unto itself.

Then there's populism, now a euphemism for statism. Mike Huckabee thrives on populist rhetoric, delivered with a mouth greased with snake oil. No doubt, he turns phrases as well as he turns out Christian votes, but we're choosing a president, not a wordsmith.

</img>