Historical Debate in politics? Come on.

With an entire brouhaha erupting out of Sen. Clinton saying essentially that President Johnson was responsible for Martin Luther King's success in the American civil rights movement, one has to wonder why this is even an issue at all. Maybe it's the selective presentation of the quote by the mainstream media.

There's a lot wrong with the rhetoric on this issue, but it's not because it could be dishonoring Martin Luther King Jr. or the civil rights movement as a whole (Which isn't really a debate for politicians to be having in an election. Maybe a pair of academics at a university would make more sense).

It might be because the argument that this quote was a part of really had NOTHING to do with race and everything to do with how Clinton views herself in relation to her opponents.

If you read this very carefully you can see that she wants to portray herself as a Spitzeresque steamroller with a track record to prove it or something close to that.

I haven't been paying attention to know exactly what she means by that (I don't think it's quite exciting enough for the media if the candidates just keep arguing that they're better than each other, anyway) but don't forget, the issues are still about who would make a better candidate, not a better president.

The important thing is though that the argument she made could have been made using ANY kind of analogy about strong leadership and an issue that had grassroots support but took a president or dictator or secretary general to actually put into action. Kind of a moot point though, since that's kind of the point of having a president, I'd think.

If anything this makes everything that much more meaningless. Would you really change your vote? We know our politicians are flawed already. It'd be nice if the dirt was helpful for democracy for a change.