Spit Out the Kool-Aid!

Jonathan positively nails it when he writes, "Willing suspension of disbelief seems to be necessary in politics." It sure does. Yet what's amazing is how much we -- meaning all of us voters -- are willing to suspend our disbelief. We all back our candidates, well aware of the shallowness of their platforms and their naked pandering, but accept it. OUR guy or girl, we reason, is different from the rest. Really.

This morning I exchanged e-mails with a friend who is a longtime, passionate John McCain backer. As much she hated to admit it, she couldn't help but concede that McCain has blatantly and repeatedly distorted Mitt Romney's position on Iraq. This was hard for her to accept, because it didn't square with the image of McCain she had embraced -- Mr. Straight-talker, the super-honorable patriot who plays fair and by the rules. McCain, in her book, was always the victim of dirty tricks, never the perpetrator.

Except there he was, lying about Romney's position on Iraq. And also claiming -- absurdly -- that if president, he wouldn't sign into law the very immigration bill he authored just a few months earlier. So much for straight talk.

But I don't mean to single out McCain. I've written about my own disappointment with my own candidate, Mike Huckabee, when I realized that, yes, he was a politician, too. We've seen countless Democrats and liberals in recent days (including Jonathan and Rob) say they were shocked to see the Clintons play mean-spirited hardball with Barack Obama. (Trust me, conservatives and Republicans weren't the least bit surprised.) Likewise, plenty of conservatives have been astonished to see the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity viciously beating up on their preferred candidates -- liberals would tell you they could have seen it coming for miles.

You see, we drink the Kool-Aid not just about politicians, but about pundits, institutions, causes -- anything that we deem to be on "our side" and thus incapable of malfeasance or shallowness.

But there's no cause so good as not to attract bad people to it. Politicians are human, and flawed, just like the rest of us. And sadly, in our hyper-competitive political system, no one seems to make it to the upper echelons of presidential campaigning without making some serious concessions along the way. We have to spit out the Kool-Aid, own up to all the candidates' deficiencies, and then decide whose we can most live with.

There is no perfect candidate. And beware of the pundit who tells you there is.