Medary.com

Cicero, at Winds of Change, writes of his dissatisfaction at both of the major political parties:

My option as a voter appears to be a false choice. Either I can vote Republican, lest we ignore the war on terror, or I can vote Democrat, lest we lose the planet to the sun. Our political culture is coarse and cramped with soundbites that have overshadowed eloquent debate. There are no Daniel Websters anymore, riveting packed galleries in the Senate chamber with soaring rhetoric expounding on the great issues of the age. No Lincoln-Douglas debates. After Martin Luther King was assassinated, Robert Kennedy stood on the back of a truck in Indianapolis quoting Aeschylus on the meaning of grief to angry black Americans. No more.

There are few genuine debates taking place in congress. There is little eloquence. There is mostly position-taking and attack. We find mostly 'where's the beef' and 'gotchya' politics. We've come nowhere after five years of war. If anything, we've devolved.

We do appear doomed to at best two more years of tiresome gotcha politics. At worst, should the Democrats regain control of even one of the houses of Congress this November, we're looking at a non-stop parade of McCarthy-style witchhunts of the Bush Administraton.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world will not stop plotting, scheming, seething, fighting, killing, dying. "Are we safer today than we were on 9/11" is a question based on a false premise. How safe were we on 9/10? How safe were we on 9/12? They were coming for us on 9/10. They're still coming.

We've lept onto the back of the tiger. We have no choice now but to ride it, because if we get off, the tiger will turn around and bite.