Cynicism

Sometimes the endless US electoral process can make a person just a little bit cynical.

Witness these candid comments from Mark Goodwin, who managed Oliver North's run for the US Senate. He is, for the record, evil.

Quoted from the documentary A Perfect Candidate:

We're all caught up in the show, we're all caught up in the entertainment value of politics. We have to serve up something every day for the press. It's like feeding lions. If they're fed they don't turn on us. But the day they're not fed they're hungry and they turn on us. So we have to serve up the daily entertainment, the daily side show.

Getting people elected, whether we like it or not, is not pretty, but getting people elected, unfortunately, has a lot to do with dividing. Setting up bases of support and fracturing off those that, you know... it's like busting a big rock. You try to chip off your piece and break the rest of it into so many smithereens that they don't matter.

But that is different from what it takes to govern, because what it takes to govern is all about finding concensus on contention issues and bringing together people who don't always agree under some sense of common purpose. And we are obsessed with getting people elected, and we are obsessed with the show.. and so are you or you wouldn't be here. So we provide daily entertainment. What we are not providing is serious solutions to what's going on in the country. Not us, not Clinton, not Bush. Not anybody.

Note 1: he's referring to Bush I.
Note 2: Jon Stewart could only say "amen."