This post is my darkest, blackest fear.

It's also something that has been bubbling up to the surface more in my soul lately. Kerry's campaign is a mess, Kerry himself is much less the candidate I want or need than the best available option, and then there was this feeling that America needs something like Bush.

It doesn't want thinking in movies, in TV, in books, in print, so why would it want thinking in government? We want action and soundbites and poses. We want John Wayne and Arnold Schwarzenegger. We want caricatures rather than fully drawn portraits.

Marceau, and Jesse if you link through, see this election as a true turning point. It may well be the last gasps of the two-party system, something I saw for myself in the Perot '92 campaign. The more I think about that time in my life, the more I think Ross was simply ahead of his time. (Yes, yes ... wrong messenger, I know.)

I'm not enough of a student of history to know what the downfall was of the Whigs, the whatevers that once were the opposition then faded. It just feels that way, when a party can't inspire from the top, when its best leaders seem like such pale comparisons to those of the past. Even sparks like Obama or Edwards seem like echoes of Clinton's traits in a different package.

I'm ready to be inspired. I'm ready to work for something. I want to believe. I really want to believe. I really want to ...

Please, John, I want to believe.