I have to dissent from AS's view of politics, that he relates to "The Clinton Rules".
First, we know that politics is a lowest-common-denominator sport, for a long time now in America, right? (Do we have a warrior culture? Are people indeed happiest in the mud of the trenches or just inured to it? The point being that the descent-into-maddess is our own to claim, not to lay off on some candidate having "started it". The citizenry are the ones who define "lowest"-that is why Murdoch "news" is so awfully caustic, because it permissions people to behave badly).
Yet, when some of us warned him (not just him, but in general) that "Rovian politics works" (therefore it exists), they dismissed us, saying that it couldn't work this time, because the nation wouldn't stand for it. Well, ... have we just seen the limits of that counter thesis? [Not that I think that Rovian politics has been deployed, but others do.]
Last, AS catches my eye with this, "I've never believed that the presidency is about mastering policy minutiae."
As soon as politics becomes about the candidates, and not what the candidates are going to do and how we estimate their ability to do it (their puissance), we have people attacking and questioning, along all lines, fair and not fair.
If you don't want "Mansfield-rules" politics, stop picking candidates based on The Great Man theory, or whatever, yes?
