Sickening

Poll: Americans Uninformed on Bush, Kerry

This is just the most disgraceful commentary on the state of journalism and public education in America I've ever seen.

You're telling me that for a billion dollars in campaign money and countless hours of media coverage, we can't get to the point where people know which candidate stands for what things? Two-thirds of people couldn't identify repealing the estate tax as a Bush issue; half didn't know Kerry would allow importing drugs from Canada; and more than half didn't know Bush wants to privatize part of Social Security.

Instead, people "know" stuff like the phrase "flip-flop."

Here's how the article wraps:

After two years of presidential campaigning and hundreds of millions of dollars in political ads, many voters remained clueless about those and other policies, according to the survey. Annenberg analyst Kate Kenski blamed the candidates for not stressing their points of view and the news media for focusing on character assessments and the race itself.

"It's disappointing that people don't know where the candidates stand, given how much money's been spent on the campaigns," said Kenski, a senior research analyst. "In the absence of good information, voters guess and often guess incorrectly."

Blamed the candidates and the media? That's all well and good, but this information is out there. I could have answered all of their questions; most of you reading this could have, too. What does it say about not the candidates or the media, but most Americans, that they'll settle for a campaign in which they know personalities and catchphrases rather than issues? What does it say about most Americans that their eyes glaze over when real issues are discussed in print or on television? To put it bluntly: is the problem that the candidates and the media are giving the audience what it seems to want, or is the problem that the audience is mostly composed of idiots?