Dropping the pretense

Maybe there was a time, in the mists of history, when an election was-or at least pretended to be-a search for truth about what was good for the nation. Tell me I'm not alone in my fascination with the following samples of typical modern political discourse:

"_____is in the tricky position of having to do many things at once. He needs to make clear he understands that people are hurting. He needs to offload blame. He needs to persuade voters that things can only get better --- and that his opponents will only make things worse."

"_____positioned himself as a friend of NAFTA in his Ottawa speech."

"_____needs to be seen as credible on the world stage, and_____needs to be seen as somebody who knows the price of gas."

"The ____party needs to be seen as the party of reform."

"_____strategists worry that a weak economy will hurt ____in November."

"It's a win-win for_____if he can position himself as both a fiscal conservative (and spin it to be neocon-friendly using the Reagan riffs) and a maverick (appealing to…"

"_____needs to appeal to young voters…."

"_____must allure black voters…."

This is all about posturing, appealing, luring, and "being seen as." There is not even the pretense anymore that it is not a game. The statements above are about as open an admission as one can imagine that a political campaign is all about aggrandizement of candidate or party. It is as if we all had a few drinks and ratified a new social contract in liquor: "Hey, I'll stop pretending to have high moral principles if you stop pretending." The fact that the rest of us now take this state of affairs in stride is testimony to the completeness of the crime. "Truth has perished" (Jeremiah 7:28).