Life Imitates Art (Badly)

Sunday morning is filled with political discussion shows. Sure, now that there are all the news channels of various stripes on cable, you can get your fix 24/7. But Sunday morning is when the shows reign. While you're there, you can watch the experts handicapping the field.

Sunday afternoon and evening, in the fall, are all about pro football. You can learn about the strategies and the lives of the players. Now that ESPN has made Monday Night Football primarily an outlet to flog Disney content, Sunday is where football is at. While you're there, you can watch the experts handicapping the field.

It's an easy transition from political coverage to sports coverage, because they are performed so similarly. Discussions of strategies and tactics, life stories, who has momentum. Keith Olbermann slides effortlessly from one to the other.

Whatever this contributes to football, sports are a form of entertainment. Politics, however, is more than that. Politics is how we make decisions as a people, and it's hard to see the kind of data made available being informative to the citizenry.

The choice a candidate makes whether or not to advocate immigration reform is analyzed in the same way as the choice a head coach makes whether or not to go into the cover two: What are it's strengths, it's weaknesses? What voters does the position attract? Whom will it alienate? It's all about the tactics, and nothing about the ethics.

Olbermann and others like him attempt to address this in their shows, but by giving us pre-formed opinions. They'll make up your mind for you. That's not what I want.

I want to understand the issues, not hear influential people's opinions on the issues. I'm not interested in the tradeoffs between voting blocs, but the tradeoffs between consequences. I'm more interested in how a candidate will govern than how a candidate will win.

The commentators are knowledgeable enough to tell us when a president is being sent legislation as veto bait or when a candidate is trying to paint his opponent an unpopular color. They could just as easily use their knowledge to defuse these tactics, to call them out for what they are.

We can't afford to have politics viewed as another form of entertainment. It's not just a game. It's where the rules are made by which we live our lives.