Being dumb on purpose seems to be exactly what the candidates are doing all the time.

People who have been governors of states or mayors of major cities are not dummies. They are intelligent and capable politicians and government executives who have proved that they can win elections, and are in the running for leadership of major parties.

So they pretend to be dumb on the assumption that swing voters are also dumb, so they won't notice, and that more intelligent voters have nowhere else to go anyway.

The deliberate dumbness is particularly obvious in the case of the current batch of Republicans, but the Democrats are not immune to it at all. Al Gore played deliberately dumb when he was up against Bush and paid for it when the election was there for the taking.

It's about time that candidates started to talk honestly about what they believe in and where they want the future of the nation to go in terms of things like foreign affairs, energy, pollution, carbon emissions, dependency on oil, our falling currency, health care, and education.

Right now of all the candidates in both parties Obama seems like the only one who has maintained any contact with reality. This is why his candidacy is advancing while others are stalled.

When people hold high political office they become divorced from reality after a while of living in gubernatorial mansions surrounded by lackeys, being driven by state troopers with flashing lights, having traffic lights stop for them to pass, being surrounded by yes-men and women, fucking cute interns, giving interviews to sycophantic reporters and TV hosts, and so on.

Out of this whole bunch, Obama seems to be the only one who could see the obvious--that going into Iraq would be idiotic.

In 2002 BEFORE Iraq Obama said:

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda...

Never mind that I was saying the same thing myself at the time, but we should now be acclaiming Obama as the true visionary who was the only one who could see that the emperor had no clothes.

This is why his candidacy is advancing. It has little to do with his Oprah endorsement, though he could do worse than naming her as vice president.

He actually seems to be in touch with reality (as much as a national politician can be). The rest are either nuts or pretending to be stupid.

How does believing in the "reality" of Adam and Eve affect one's tenure in office? How is that scary, from a policy perspective?

In a nutshell, Genesis 3:16. If you believe that Adam and Eve were the first two humans and that Eve was created from Adam's rib, and that the reason that women go through pain in childbirth is that it is God's punishment to Eve for leading Adam into sin (as stated in above mentioned verse), then would this not influence your policy making on a range of reproductive issues.

For example you might see women wanting to have an abortion as a way for them to avoid the God-ordained punishment of painful childbirth. Hell, you might even not want poor women to have anesthesia at the tax payer's expense.

Extreme examples? Maybe, but surely we want to know what beliefs underly policy decisions.

Also belief in Adam and Eve implies not believing in evolution, which opens up further cans of worms in education and funding for science.

Now if you say "Well the story of Adam and Eve is a charming myth that gives folk explanations of certain phenomena that the ancients gave their best explanation for," then that does not stop you from believing that difficult childbirth in humans is the result of an evolutionary process that led us from being quadrupeds to biped, rather than believing that women are supposed to suffer because God said so.

This Jesus-as-bro-to-Lucifer thing makes a lot of sense. It is reminiscent of the theory that Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty may have been twins, serparated at birth. What we do know is that they were both created by Arthur Doyle, just as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide were both the offspring of R.L. Stevenson.

(It is no coincidence that Doyle and Stevenson were both Scottish authors, as Scotland is and was a home to austere Calvinism.)

Romney and Huckerbee may also be secret blood brothers, as clearly they were both created by J.K. Rowling, and like Professor Snape, they are ambiguous characters who may or may not be on the side of good or evil, depending on your point of view.

Hopefully one of their debates will get this Adam-and-Eve thing cleared up once and for all. I think we all want to know if they were real people. Maybe Prof. Dawkins can host the debate. And let's clear up how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, while we are in problem-solving mode.

But really, if Obama and Cheney are cousins, then anything is possible.

While this is going on the Democratic Party candidates need to be very careful. They cannot be seen to be mean-spirited towards the feeble-minded, and should maintain a neutral God-is-great posture while declining to get into specifics. Let J.K. Rowling handle that.