Devolution

I am old, so I remember a time when Bobby Kennedy, a patrician if there ever was one, became radicalized by seeing the devastation that poverty wreaked on the people who lived in Appalachia. Today instead we get two Yale skull-and-bonesmen who never spend any time with people who are struggling. They have never seen up close what it's like to live in public housing, what it's like to come home to a trailer broiling in the heat, without quite enough food to keep the kids happy.

Both men traipse through the countryside shielded by their respective bubbles. The Bush people even go so far as to handpick the crowds so that George can mug and whinny and issue one-liners without anyone telling him he hasn't a clue.

Here were are a half-hour into the debate and Schieffer has given both men softballs that they have bobbled. Not because they don't have the facts, but because they don't understand the impact of policy on the lives of real people. The issue for most displaced workers isn't a Pell grant, it's extending unemployment benefits and insurance so that they don't end up on the street.

Atheist that I am, all I can think is - god save us from them both.