Oh great just what we needed - justificaton for political liars (aka politicians) :-)

The point is a very good one--no need for deceptive arguments if those being fooled don't have any say anyway. However, while the existence of political rhetoric (in the general, neutral sense) is a sign of democracy, perhaps the poor state of political rhetoric may also be a sign of weakness of a democracy.

The high tradition of Greek and Roman philosophy and rhetoric, from Plato and Aristotle to Cicero and Seneca, understood the need for a type of speaking that paid attention both to sound argument and to appealing form. Neither good reasons alone nor inspiring turns of phrase were held to be sufficient for good rhetoric--citizens would either be too coldly logical to feel love for their country, or they would be too easily fooled to judge what is the best course of action.

I personally have grown tired of much of the late-night snickering at Bush's verbal mistakes. But it should be somewhat alarming to us that many Americans support our president's policies not because he has argued for them persuasively (I can't think of a time he has), but that we think he's a good guy with good advisors. This seems to smack of a kind of paternalism approved by election--electoral partiarchy, if you will. We don't want someone who will make a case to us, but rather someone who we trust to figure it out for us.

This is not to say that Bush has caused our current democratic disengagement, if it exists. The point is that Bush's inability to put together a sentence are perhaps sign of a bad trend that's had steam for a while.

"Bush's inability...IS perhaps a sign of..."

--looks like we're all grammatically corrupt.

I could simply edit the comment, then the grammar cops would have to use screen shots and archived pages to prosecute their case.