After watching the Florida debate, I’m glad I chose not to watch the others and may not watch more.

I seriously hope children aren’t watching these debates because they surely aren’t setting much of an example on how to be statesman-like.

When I was done watching it, I felt dumber for having dared to view the debate. I should have taken my brain out of my skull and set it aside to protect it from ingesting Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, more Romney than Newt, behaving like six-year-olds calling each other names in the sandbox.

“No you’re ugly.” “No you’re ugly and you smell.” “You’re ugly and smell and you’re momma doesn’t love you.”

What’s more, CNN didn’t learn from the South Carolina debate, which helped send Gingrich to the win in that state. It didn’t work this time since Romney trounced Gingrich in the Florida primary, proving once again that going negative works. Now, everyone around is counting Gingrich out of the race.

Apparently, Romney showed he could be mean, tough and just plain nasty, which the conservative base had been waiting to see if he had it in him.

Diminutive Wolf Blitzer just couldn’t resist stirring the personal attacks pot and then kept on even after Rick Santorium showed the only statesmanship there and said enough already.

On Fox News, Bill O’Reilly and Bernie Goldberg, however, gave Blitzer the thumbs up for keeping at Gingrich for attacks on Romney in the press. By virtue of that position, it’s clear O’Reilly and Goldberg aren’t Gingrich fans.

Goldberg should stick to HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel and leave analyzing politics and media to others. And O’Reilly should have been sent back to tabloid/gossip show Inside Edition long ago.

It seems they have forgotten that Romney’s camp is the one that started the personal attacks as soon as Gingrich began getting more traction and Romney started not looking as a strong as thought. Instead of making history and winning Iowa and New Hampshire, it turns out everyone jumped the gun too early in Iowa when Santorium actually emerged with the most votes.

Gingrich had tried to stay above the personal attack fray. But he was forced to respond when Romney supporters became relentless – better to tear someone down than to beat them by telling them how you’re better. Gingrich even tried to rise above it in the debate after Santorium stepped in but Romney had to do one more dig.

Is that the kind of president people want?

There’s no doubt that everyone’s opposition teams, those clandestine-like teams that dig up mountains of dirt and even talk to a candidate’s kindergarten teacher for a tidbit, are working overtime finding whatever pile of dung they can throw at the other. That’s just the ugly side of politics and has little to do with the issues of the day, kind of like how the debates appear to have become.

It’s been good for ratings, which is sad because it’s encouraging the kind of childish behavior that occurred in the Florida debate.

If this is the future, why bother with debates. Just put the candidates in a cage like the Ultimate Fighting Championship fights and the man who walks out is the candidate or perhaps president.

Bah, why bother with elections when we can get the toughest guy among them to be president. Change the constitution so we can get Arnold as president.

We could all watch it on television and even place bets via television/Internet/electric blender/coffee maker, sort of like in the movie Death Race.

Or, we could make the presidential primaries like Survivor and we can vote them off the island. They could be put on Alcatraz just to make it even more interesting.

You may think I’m kidding, but there’s no way that the current style of debates does anything to improve civil discourse in this country when that is what’s desperately needed.

Murray’s character is a television reporter who goes nuts first then figures it all out in the end to get the girl.

For a long time, Washington, D.C., has resembled “Groundhog Day” but without the positive ending. The New York Times reported recently that House Republicans feared continued bickering when they returned to session this week.

Indeed, the Republicans will face withering attacks from House Democrats and the White House over the coming months as President Obama pours it on to get reelected. As the Times pointed out, Obama has made Congress his chief target in his reelection bid. But Republicans also are fighting among themselves. They are itching to show some accomplishments on regulations and such to dangle in front of constituents back home so they can get reelected and maintain control of the House.

Bottom line, it means yet more excruciating gridlock and more bickering, finger pointing and nah, nah, nah, boo boo and it will be captured by the media in infinite detail. The abundant media outlets, primarily television and the Internet, will continue amplifying the discord and distorting information as politicians fight for attention amid the cacophony in reality television style.

The Republican debates have scored high ratings by making the events look more like “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

At what point does waking up to the same reality begin to convince lawmakers of all stripes to figure out how to rise each morning and alter the reality? Unfortunately, that probably won’t happen anytime soon.

Elected officials have bickered with each either other since the dawn of time. It’s a part of politics.

But until about 20 years ago, the squabbling happened largely out of sight. The 24-hour news stations were in their infant stages as were the Internet’s broader capabilities. We got only the highlights through the media, and news came slowly and with context in newspapers.

Now, it’s all so magnified through untold Internet outlets and the explosion of the 24-hour news cycle on a 100 channels where stories appear repeatedly during the day, interspersed with “talking heads” giving “unbiased” analysis. The stage for lawmakers is monstrous.

Every move and every word is parsed, scrutinized and manipulated. Information flows so much like fire hoses dousing a five-alarm fire that comprehending it is like playing Chinese whispers or telephone. While there’s a lot of information, it’s usually thin and mutates as it flows.

Everyone is racing to tell the world first through Facebook or Twitter, which may be connected through blogs that spread the word via Google news alerts or some other electronic news reader.

The biggest problem is the information is often incomplete and incorrect more than a few times. In a lot of cases, the initial story’s origin becomes obscured. You can go to a blog posting and click multiple times before you actually find the original source.

Think about how gossip travels. When you spend the time to actually investigate beyond face value, you usually find out there’s a lot more to the story and it’s not nearly as bad as first appeared.

Few information consumers bother seeking full context, and casual news watchers take the initial information as gospel.

This means news and information can be easily manipulated and distorted. And don’t think for a minute that politicians and their allies haven’t figure out how to use this all to their advantage. Politicians quickly learned how to use or abuse, depending on your viewpoint, the unwieldy Internet and the 24-hour news cycle to not only to embellish their words across but also to stymie the opposition with exaggerations.

Negative campaign ads don’t just live on TV, they live on the Internet forever and ever.

We might just stand a chance if we simply turned most of it off and settled into a simpler way of getting our news and information that has context and isn’t filled with hyperbole designed to standout from all the noise.

Then what needs to happen is lawmakers are locked in a room with no Internet, television and mobile phones to contact the media. There, they could hammer out deals and bicker all they want, even throw a punch or two, but all we see is the end result for us to comment on instead of our brains getting bogged down in all of the public blather.

If we don’t like what they came up with, send them back to the room. This flies in the face of open meeting laws but until all of the distractions can be eliminated, Washington, D.C., is always going to be stuck in Groundhog Day.

That’s the common refrain among conservatives and we will hear it plenty as Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney tries to run off his competition for the honor of trying to oust President Obama.

Conservatives generally believe Obama is spending our tax dollars like a drunken sailor in a house of ill repute in the Philippines.

But there’s a basic civics lesson folks conveniently forget – a president can’t spend money Congress doesn’t give him.

The Founding Fathers set up the type of government we have to spread power among branches of government, checks and balances, instead of consolidating power in the hands of a single person. Despite that, presidential elections seem more like king making.

A president, of course, can successfully convince Congress to spend money on particular programs or, in former President George W. Bush’s case, on two wars and huge bailouts. The U.S. apparently has spent in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion on those wars and homeland security.

Pair that with two Bush tax cuts, a stinky economy, a series of corporate and banking bailouts and Bush and Obama efforts to stimulate a moribund economy and boom you have debt that rises to $15 trillion, a large chunk of we owe ourselves. Then, everyone stands around pointing fingers at who is responsible for running up the credit card.

Congress is the place where the money is authorized and appropriated. Lawmakers set a budget before they know the income.

Presidential hopeful and former House Speaker praised the New Hampshire state house speaker for determining income first and then creating a budget that fits the income, which is opposite of what most states do. The result in New Hampshire was an 11-percent spending cut “which if accomplished in Washington would move us back on the right track,” Gingrich said.

It seems the average Joe, has figured the Congress is the real culprit. If you believe polls, Congress has an approval rating of 9 percent, significantly lower than President Obama’s approximately 40 percent, remarkable considering the sluggish economy.

Colorado Democrat, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet has noted the unpopularity of Congress on the Senate floor with charts showing that Congress’s approval rating/popularity ties Hugo Chavez, the crazy leader of Venezuela, and falls below the U.S. becoming Communist, Watergate and the British Petroleum oil disaster.

The Internal Revenue Service’s popularity ties Obama’s approval rating, which is sure to be ironic to some.

The bottom line is the public at large generally views Congress as a whole as filled with a bunch of buffoons. So much for the great big Tea Party revolution that was going to make it all better by putting the House of Representatives into Republican hands. Voters were under the misguided belief that spending would be slashed and the economy would improve.

It’s no different than voters thinking the world would improve when Democrats took over Congress after Bush was in office for two years.

Lawmakers go to Washington with the best of intentions and zeal to make a difference but immediately get sucked into the Beltway vortex and become what they ran against.

The problem for Republicans vying for their party’s nomination is they can’t run on the platform that Congress stinks up the place because their party controls the House. Doing so would be like saying, “Hey, even my party can’t shoot straight.” That obviously would play into the hands of Obama, who plans to run against Congress in his bid for reelection.

So, frontrunner Mitt Romney and his challengers have no choice but to blame Obama using the slight of hand.

“We know that the future of this country is better than 8 or 9% unemployment,” he said after winning New Hampshire. “It is better than $15 trillion in debt. It is better than the misguided policies and broken promises of the last three years – and the failed leadership of one man. The President has run out of ideas. Now, he’s running out of excuses.”

Sure, Obama had promised jobs and to stimulate the economy. It’s what we all expect from a president, right? Voters believe a single man, the president, regardless of party, can wave his hand and jobs appear.

Fact is no president can create jobs unless he hires more government workers, and no president can will the economy to be better. Sure, they can take some steps like fiddle with monetary policy, ease regulations or not kowtow to environmentalists and approve building a new pipeline.

But that’s like throwing a rock in the water to create a ripple amid voter expectation of a tidal wave.

It’s doubtful that Romney or any of the other Republican candidates can sweep into office and make the economy better.

The free market is the free market and will improve the economy when it’s good and ready.

But if we change presidents and the debt doesn’t get lowered, unemployment remains stuck and spending stays the same, at least our fallback is to blame one person – the president.

You can change your mind, change your clothes, change the color of your house, change diapers and so on.

In the political arena, however, politicians of all stripes have sucked the marrow out of the word to make it virtually meaningless and empty. Politicians stand on the stump and bellow into the microphone, “We need change” for the country, city, state or wherever audience the politician is addressing.

We will see a lot more of it again as presidential campaigning heats up.

In campaigns, change has become an advertising catchword, a wicket that some focus/polling company said needs to be repeated often to attract disgruntled voters. Every politician down to the rank amateur throws “change” around with abandon to coax voters into casting their ballots for them.

But it’s not entirely the fault of politicians that the ruse works so well. When voters complain about unfulfilled promises with the person they elected, they need to look in the mirror to see who is at fault.

Time and again, voters allow themselves to be duped into believing that the particular change they want will actually happen, much the same way they believe a particular brand of shampoo will provide more body and shine to their hair than the other brand.

Then there’s the question of how voters define change. Generally, there are many competing views of what constitutes change –  what one group wants is not what another seeks.

Merriam-Webster defines the word change in one reference as transformative – radically different.  That’s the type of change politicians dangle in front of expectant voters, the big change that will happen if you elect them.

This, of course, has been going on for … well … forever.

Twenty years ago, President Clinton’s crew rolled into the White House believing it had a mandate for change. Change was part of the campaign message. Never mind, though, that he won with less than 50 percent of the popular vote, which meant most voters didn’t want him. Billionaire Ross Perot was competing with a change message of his own.

If Ross Perot hadn’t of been in the race, George H. W. Bush probably would have been reelected, which would have meant, generally folks weren’t all that interested in change.

Clinton ended up causing change similar to what has happened with President Obama. Voters that had put Clinton into the White House put the House of Representatives into Republican control in 1994 with goading from none other than Newt Gingrich who became Speaker of the House. Republicans gained control for the first time in 40 years.

Gingrich’s Republicans offered change with the Contract for America, a nice slogan and a program of legislation based on party philosophy that the House would pass. There was a lot of bluster. Some legislation got passed, some didn’t and Clinton vetoed others. What legislation did pass later got watered down in the Washington, D.C. machine over time.

Nothing much changed. What happened instead is the level of political vitriol began to rise as cable news channels and Internet sites proliferated. The change voters got was politics that looks more like salacious reality television.

Just under two years ago, the Tea Party successfully convinced voters with a change message and sent many to Congress two years after President Obama successfully rolled into the White House on change. Republicans regained control of the House.

Those two versions of change collided like two missiles hitting each other at supersonic speed, both obliterating into nothing but dust.

The result has been yet more bickering, obstruction and empty rhetoric from both sides.

Democrats will argue there has been change, just look at healthcare reform. But so much of it doesn’t take effect until later years, leaving it open to be changed or simply eliminated altogether.  It’s all a matter of who is in charge and the Republicans hope they are.

Conservatives everywhere started beating the drum hard for change as soon as Obama was elected.

They weren’t as displeased about Obama’s agenda and ultimately his passage of Obamacare as they were about getting beaten. They were embarrassed at being outplayed in the last presidential election with the advertising and marketing game, which Republicans had owned for a while.

The Democrats copied the Republican election playbook and did a better job selling “change.” Their rookie beat their veteran, and not just any rookie, but a guy who identifies as African-American and has a Muslim-sounding name.

Along with change, Obama’s campaign invoked “Hope” and the can-do slogan of “Yes We Can.”

It was masterful advertising made easier by vast discontent with President Bush and an economy brought to its knees by a banking crisis on a Republican’s watch.

Obama dazzled many with his message of hope and change. But once he was elected, the president’s base soon became disenchanted because change wasn’t happening fast enough, which raises another problem with our political system – expectations.

Voters buy into the change message then expect it to miraculously happen overnight.

We live in a society ruled by the half-hour sitcom in which problems are resolved in actually less than 30 minutes if you take out commercials. Constant polling and the 24-hour news cycle with blowhard talking heads makes it all worse.

Some would argue that electing a black man president constitutes change – a new openness to people of color. But it’s only change if it can be done consistently. Otherwise, the spot in history is an anomaly.

After all, the Republicans chewed up Herman Cain and spit him out pretty quickly. Michele Bachmann isn’t getting much traction either. In fact, no woman has ever gotten far in presidential campaigns, even on the Democrat side.

The Republicans could bring about a different change in open mindedness, however. It’s looking like the Republican field will get narrowed to a Mormon and a converted Catholic who fooled around in two previous marriages and somehow found redemption with the third wife.

Evangelical Christians have to twist, bend, contort to feel good about supporting either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.

Choosing Romney is particularly vexing for the evangelical Christians given that they generally don’t view Mormon’s as Christians and haven’t since the religion sprung up in the early 19th Century.

An early 20th Century Christian writer even compared Mormonism to Islam in terms of what Christians should fear.

Romney’s success legitimizes the religion and him winning the presidency would cement that for sure. That certainly would be a change.

But is it the kind of change Americans seek? Or are they looking for change that is substantive and lasting? It’s sure difficult to tell if the latter is truly what they want.

But going into his second term, it’s now clear what he won’t be able to do. First, the Tennessee State Fairgrounds referendum results show there sure are a lot of people who don’t want him messing with the property.

It’s a pretty good signal when “for ratification” doesn’t pass by just a small percentage but by a more than 2-to-1 margin and falls only 7,118 votes short of the total votes for Dean (50,377). And little money was spent to get the approval passed, perhaps less than what’s typically spent on a district council race.

Secondly, Dean won’t be able to hold any more sway over the Metro Council than he already has. Instead of fighting the referendum, Dean’s campaign applied a broader tactic of trying to gain greater sway over council by filling it with more friendly members. But the machine sputtered in the process and may have ensured the council has more resolve in pushing back on any Dean agenda, making the council less of a rubber stamp.

Before the election, observers had questioned if Dean’s coattails were long enough to carry many candidates into office. It appears they aren’t long enough.

Turnout in the election of 18 percent was on par with former Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell’s reelection for a second term. There were roughly 2,000 more votes this time for mayor than for Purcell.

Still, Dean’s 79 percent, however, didn’t top former Mayor Bill Purcell’s 84.8 percent margin of victory over nobodies in that election. Dean may have landed more votes had the IQT Solutions deal not blown up during early voting or the convention center ruling over the land price not put the project in jeopardy of busting its budget.

That’s what may have hurt him in the district council races instead of the mayoral race because there was no serious challenge to him. Had there been a serious challenger, it is unlikely Dean would have been spending money in district races.

Dean was criticized for getting involved with individual races. But his camp’s spin was they were supporting “independent thinkers” who desired the progress Dean was presenting. That’s an interesting view of independent thinking. Wouldn’t independent mean independent of Dean’s thinking as well?

The machine failed miserably at trying to unseat Councilman Jason Holleman, who was a major critic of the convention center and viewed as one of “No” crowd. The mayor’s supporters lavished Holleman’s challenger Sarah Lodge Tally with a lot of money and time only to get trounced as Holleman.

Dean and his supporters couldn’t beat incumbent Councilman Duane Dominy, another thorn in the mayor’s side. The run-off will decide whether Dean’s supporters fail against Councilman Robert Duvall. David Glasgow, who Dean appointed to the Metro Tourism and Convention Commission, was beat in the open challenge for District 18.

The next four years is going to be interesting as Dean deals with budget issues and tries to move forward on initiatives such as a new ballpark for the Nashville Sounds. He’s not going have an overly friendly council.

The scene in the video is from the 2004 movie “Downfall” and shows Adolf Hitler in his bunker talking to his top military leadership and aids, learning that Berlin is about to fall and him admonishing his generals. They are all speaking German, leaving open the possibility for anyone to edit in their own subtitles and has been parodied many times.

This parody is titled, “Getting Das Boot from District 24.” The video opens with a German general talking and pointing to a map saying, “Dean hates us. Bredesen hates us. John Cooper’s God damn family hates us. Your mom’s ID calls show us hemorraging (sic) votes from White Bridge Road to West End.”

Later in the video, one subtitle says, “No one goes to the fairgrounds except half-drunk rednecks and their waterhead babies.” In another reference to the fairgrounds, the video says, “And the fairgrounds vote. Like those fairgrounds illiterate supporters even vote.”

Chatter is that the video was made by someone in Sarah Lodge Tally’s camp. Tally says not so. “I think that whoever made the You Tube video has far too much time on his hands,” she wrote in an email response to NCC. “It certainly was not anyone involved in my campaign.”

Whoever put it together knows the campaign lingo, however, and knows recent electoral history with Sen. Dough Henry and Jeff Yarbro. It also picks at Nick Bailey, Holleman’s campaign manager, Councilwoman Emily Evans, former Sylvan Park Councilman John Summers and Councilman Eric Crafton.

Holleman took the high road and refrained from harshly criticizing the mysterious source of the video. “It’s a shame that my opponent’s campaign doesn’t appear interested in substantively addressing the many, serious issues that face our district and our city,” he said.

Mayor Karl Dean has joined Tally on a mailer and a host of supporters of former Gov. Phil Bredesen have stepped up to help her with money and fundraisers.

But the there have been shenanigans, heavy duty mudslinging that is only going to get stickier Dean’s folks seek to unseat Holleman and Holleman seeks to stay put. Twitter is burning up with barbs among a handful of people. Comments on media stories have been sharp. Someone, for example, keeps whispering behind the scenes about Holleman’s DUI a long time ago.

For now, the trashing has been mostly one-sided. But whispering has begun around Tally’s job at Nashville law firm Miller & Martin. Miller & Martin represents the Metropolitan Development & Housing Agency in the legal battle with Tower Investments over the value of the largest piece of the new convention center’s footprint.

Tally works in the healthcare part of the firm yet whispering is that since her firm benefits from representing MDHA, she benefits as well. Tally has stated her support for the convention center and the mayor. Holleman, of course, was critical of the convention center funding and that’s a big reason he has a target on his head.

The latest one has Dean as Elvis crooning to mesmerize the local media. News2 was left out of the cartoon for whatever reason but The Tennessean and the City Paper are prominently displayed.

County Seat’s profile claim: “The World’s First Twitter Based Editorial Cartoon. Tennessee’s Cultural Barometer……It’s like listening to your Uncle Billy.” The cartoonist also has made some fun of Metro Council members as well. Outgoing Councilman Jamie Hollin was one target after his, um, interaction with Councilman Jim Gotto. The drubbing the Republicans dished out to the Democrats last year got a cartoon as well.

Note in the latest shot at Dean the red thong underwear being tossed at the mayor. We can’t decide if that is supposed to me strippers are for Dean in the hopes that he lightens up the five-year-old law considered onerous on strip clubs in Nashville.

Let’s say it does mean that. Supporters of altering the strip club law have chattered that may be one way of reigniting economic development. Attorney and former Metro Council member Adam Dread said recently that conventions have bypassed Nashville because the strip clubs aren’t what they used to be. Of course, tourism officials are reluctant to acknowledge that. Given the slump in convention and tourism business and the need to fill a new convention center, there’s a mild argument that amending the law could help bring more convention business. Obviously, that wouldn’t be the preferred sales point but one of the more subtle ones.

The New York-based company announced in early June it would bring 900 jobs to downtown office space south of Broadway for a call center. Dean’s administration had offered the revamped tax incentive to lure the company here. Now it is looking as if the deal may not happen at all,  becoming an embarrassment to the Dean administration and the city, observers said.

News has been coming out of Canada all day with IQT abruptly shutting down three call centers there. City officials are asking IQT more questions. How well they are answered may not matter. Metro Council and others may be unwilling to take a company with the track record it has shown. If Nashville takes the company, the city could look like a scavenger, or worse, a fool, observers said.

The chatter is that blame is being laid at the feet of Alexia Poe, the former director of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Community Development, suggesting she didn’t examine the company closely enough. But determining IQT’s financial health would have been difficult given IQT’s status as a private company. With the incentive packages, there is no requirement to provide financial statements.

There is talk of amending the new incentive legislation to require that companies provide the city with audited financial statements before receiving incentives. That obviously would be geared mostly toward private companies since public companies are easy to evaluate with the financial disclosures required through the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Since Dean doesn’t have a difficult race for a second term, losing the jobs the city thought it was gaining won’t have much impact on the race or his winning.

Torrence was dinged for working only three days a week, playing golf on city time and using a city vehicle for personal purposes. Arriola apparently has accepted $40 tips for getting people hitched and used city funds to pay for public relations, as reported by intrepid investigative reporter Phil Williams of News Channel 5. Dean now is auditing the clerk’s office two weeks after a new budget went into place.

If anyone recalls, the Dean campaign sent out a release back in April touting the support of 10 constitutional officers endorisng his campaign. Torrence and Arriola are on the list.

“I am honored and humbled to have the support of these leaders who work hard every day for the people of Davidson County,” Dean said in that release. “While each of us has a different role, we are all tasked with being responsive to the public and making government as efficient as possible.”

The troubles with Torrence and Arriola take something out of those prepared words. A challenger could have had some fun there. Imagine a debate between Dean and a strong challenger with the topic front and center.

A mayor has little oversight of these offices. The budget hearings on their budgets are largely perfunctory and come with few questions. So the troubles with those officers create more of a perception problem for the mayor than anything else, a perception that won’t taint him much, however, since few seem to think it’s a good idea to challenge a mayor running for a second term.