The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Those old enough to remember Viet Nam undoubtedly recall how each night, on network news, we were presented with all the brutality and carnage of war. It was as close as most Americans ever came to experiencing combat on an intimate level. On a daily basis the nightly news showed medevacs, fire fights and wounded soldiers. Ultimately, it contributed to the public standing up and saying, "no more". The resulting outcry and other civil unrest significantly contributed to the an end of the war.
With this last conflict, the administration demonstrated the lesson learned; if you want support for the war, keep it at arms length from the populus. They learned it so well that, for the first 5 years in Iraq, there was a prohibition against even photographing coffins.
There is a lesson for politicians here as well; if you want any type of public support, keep the carnage of your wars out of public view. The endless bickering, manipulation, spinning, hypocrisy and "in your face" taunting is wearing thin. By that I mean, it's getting transparent. Whether you are Nancy Pelosi who wants us to believe she was naive enough to hear a specially prepared brief on the legality of waterboarding and not know that we would waterboard, or Newt Gingrich who would have her resign for the same basic behavior he was censured for a decade earlier, we are tired of it. Most Democrats are not Rachel Maddow and most Republicans are not Rush Limbaugh. And the extent that we allow them to define our major political parties may well mean that we will no longer have major political parties. Then we could judge people on their integrity and principals, and not by who they hang out with. What a novel idea!