Does this election cycle hold the promise of meaningful change in a country suffering from the effects of a government that has failed on every conceivable level? Not if things continue on their current course in which the game of ‘gotcha' politics has such great media-appeal. As Democratic strategist, Chris Kofinis put it, when you don't have any really good ideas you resort to the "politics of mass distraction."

Thus, the McCain camp keeps referring to Obama's decision opting out of public financing as a character flaw, for example. But, while Obama did say he would discuss the funding issue with McCain it had become increasingly clear during the primaries that McCain couldn't control supporters who continued to trumpet irrational, hate-filled diatribes against Obama. Federal funding per se represents only part of the equation. Single-issue groups and 527s are free to spend as much as they wish beyond whatever public funds are provided to national-party candidates. And therein lies the rub.

Illustrative of the inherent problem posed by the influence of such groups is the disturbing fact that McCain has enlisted the services of Bud Day, a member of the ill-named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - - the 527 that was so damaging to John Kerry when he ran for president. Defenders of Day still support a position disputed by the actual members of Kerry's swift boat. No matter the truth, however,"Swift Boaters for Truth" succeeded in disparaging a decorated war hero to rally support for Bush in 2004.

Recently many swift boat veterans have been saying they'd like their good name back. They feel their service and patriotism have been diminished by the perception that they are all just a bunch of politically-motivated hacks rather than men who served their country bravely and with honor. There is more than a touch of irony, then, about McCain's solicitation of Swift-Boater Day to attack General Wesley Clark for saying that, while no-one questions McCain's valor, his military experience, in and of itself, didn't necessarily prepare him to be Commander in Chief. Clark may have erred in the tone of his remarks, but McCain consistently alludes to his military service as an unassailable validation of his gravitas, an assertion open to interpretation.

That the McCain campaign would work so feverishly to twist Clark's remarks into an attack on his war record is just another example of how he and his surrogates distort facts - - a disappointing, but all too frequent, occurrence on "the straight-talk express." And then, goodness, gracious, Senator Webb suggested McCain should "calm down" and that, in any case, military service shouldn't be the focus of political campaigns. Well if that didn't blow the lid off a simmering tempest in a teapot. McCain, playing the offended victim, said Obama should dispatch Clark post haste for his bad. And squirrelly campaign workers activated their quick-response team to assert that Webb's remarks were evidence of a vast Obamakin conspiracy to disparage McCain's reputation as a proud warrior. And besides, we are told, McCain's policies are the real meat of his candidacy.

But what exactly are McCain's big ideas? Some say Obama is better at speechifying than at clarifying his positions. Yet such charges aren't borne out by his many policy proposals. McCain, on the other hand, is guilty of fabulous exaggerations in defining an agenda he likes to call "change you can trust." What change is that exactly? Is it the belief that "market forces", tax cuts and competition will re-invigorate the economy? Is it that off-shore drilling and nuclear power plants will address our energy needs in a responsible, far-sighted manner?  Is the ‘successful' surge that was supposed to allow Iraq to stand up so we could stand down now the reason we should stand pat in Iraq for the foreseeable future?

In what passes for insight on MSNBC, two of its designated political analysts, Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson, agreed on Wednesday morning's telecast that McCain's "best shot" is to "go after" Obama as a "risky" choice while constantly repeating the mantra, drill, drill, drill. That such a limited, and basically issue-free, agenda should form the core of a campaign strategy might help to explain why the McCain camp spends entire news cycles expressing outrage about imaginary slights.