This is not the genius of American democracy. This is the pathology of a terrible systemic illness.

As I watched Oprah introduce Obama in Iowa, the two-by-four that hit me on the head wasn't: Oprah is for Obama. It was: Oprah is against the war.

A flyer was found on windshields in several church parking lots in Iowa on Sunday, asking: is Mike Huckabee the Anti-Christ? The major GOP campaigns have all denied authorship.

If, as we now know, J. Edgar Hoover had a secret "plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty," why not Dick Cheney?

When the Romney people see the Huckabee pheasant-hunting footage, they contact every political reporter they know: Look how fat Huckabee looks in that get-up! Look at those jowls! Look at that goofy unpresidential hat! What a blunder!

It should come as no surprise that much modern media coverage of politics turns out to be a "scientifically" souped-up version of the voodoo that runs from the Delphic Oracle and the Cumaean Sibyl to the Amazing Kreskin and Bazooka Joe.