John McCain is awesome! This story, from the New York Times, discusses McCain's rejection of Republican assertions that John Kerry would "endanger national security." The best quote from McCain:

"I think he has different points of view on different issues and he will have to explain his voting record. But this kind of rhetoric, I think, is not helpful in educating and helping the American people make a choice."

Precisely! McCain basically just said that Kerry disagrees with Republicans on certain issues and that's ok. The idea that disagreement is a bad thing, that demonization of the opposition is necessary, is not a rare or original one, but ideally, it would be a non-existent one in a functional democracy. Politicians spend far too much time attacking and complaining and not enough time discussing the issues at hand so that Americans can decide the pros and cons of each side and vote for whoever they agree with most.

Instead of wondering whether Bush's National Guard duty-shirking affects his ability to be commander-in-chief (I don't think it does, in a significant way) or complaining about John Kerry throwing medals onto the White House lawn, can't the candidates deliver their plans for the future to the citizens and let us decide which is better? I'm not sure this has ever been tried, in recent times or otherwise, so to do so would be such a radical departure from the entrenched political system that I don't think we should count on seeing it happen in our lifetimes. If anything, the divisiveness and bickering in campaigns may get worse as the Republican Party has seemed to step up the militancy in recent years, and the likely eventual response from the Democrats will be to do the same.