Why our country is screwed

Today I was watching ESPN and they're doing this 50 states in 50 days thing, where they do a little piece on sports in each of the 50 states. Today was Vermont, and they showed the infamous Howard Dean "Yeah!" screech. It reminded me of how quickly a little bit of excitabilty completely derailed a candidate for president. REPEAT: People gave up on this guy because he yelled weird. Not because of ideology or issues but because he did something that was a little over-the-top emotionally. Every time I think about this, it makes me sad and I wonder how anyone in this country can have any faith in the democratic process when people make idiotic decisions based on crap like that.

In a related note, the other night on the Daily Show they showed a clip of Jeanine Pirro, who is challenging Hillary Clinton for the US NY Senate seat. In this clip, Ms. Pirro is about to comment on Clinton and looks down to see that her pre-scripted notes are missing the page which details what she was about to say. 32 seconds of page shuffling silence elapse before she turns to an aide asking for page 10. Jon Stewart comes on and says something about her candidacy ending at that point. While one can make the argument that she should be able to speak extemporaneously about her opponent, the fact that she was thrown for a loop for a 1/2 minute shouldn't influence how people vote for her. People shouldn't vote for her, but they shouldn't vote for her because of her stance on many issues, not because she fucked up in a speech.

I am a liberal democrat and while it delights me to see Republicans make fools of themselves, it is distressing to me that issues and ability to lead often take the back seat to image.