This year's election theme

Seems it all comes down to who says the most outrageous things in this election, whether in spur-of-the-moment statements during campaign appearances, or in 'dirty tricks'-type political ads.

The Los Angeles Times lists a lot of them in this story, Epidemic of foot-in-mouth afflicts candidates this year, including the Florida congressional candidate who said 'blacks don't swim', and the New York Senate candidate who speculated about Hillary's change of appearance since her college days, and worse. 'Oops' is right.

We all decry the attention paid to this stuff, but then again, maybe the Guardian reporter covering the U.S. elections is right, who said in his podcast

The only reason people are talking about this is because there is nothing else to talk about. And there is nothing else to talk about is because the issues in this campaign have not really been hammered out ...

(Added later:) More on this topic from Joel Achenbach, who says:

Voters should hide the last couple of weeks before an election.
... This is the period when anything goes, except intelligent discourse. The more you pay attention, the dumber you feel.
...It is not clear to me that the person who owes these soldiers an apology is the guy who came in second in the 2004 presidential election.

And, Keith Olbermann has another Special Comment on this topic, and concludes:

You (president Bush) instructed no one to mail the fake anthrax. Nor undermine the FBI's case. Nor call for the execution of the editors of the New York Times. Nor threaten to assassinate Stephanie Miller. Nor beat up a man yelling at Senator Allen. Nor have the first lady knife Michael J. Fox. Nor tell John McCain to lie about John Kerry.
No, you did not.
And the genius of the thing, is the same, as in King Henry's rhetorical question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?"