Politics are dirty

Way, way, way too dirty.

This article shows just how dirty they've become. Of course, let's not fool ourselves; politics have always been dirty. Back in the day political candidates would give free beer in exchange for votes. Of course, that's been outlawed since then and McCain-Feingold tried to do away with even more of the dirtiness. This has really only made the process even dirtier, with PACs and, more importantly, 527s, playing a nasty role in politics today.

The nastiness of politics isn't unexpected though. As sinful humans, we're prone towards this kind of degrading behavior.

Here's one snippet of that article that I thought was pretty sad, especially when you consider the time and energy that went into dismantling this man's reputation.

Then there was the silver bullet that claimed Republican Mike Taylor, who briefly posed a threat to Montana Sen. Max Baucus in 2002.

Democrats knew he had once owned hair care schools in Colorado. That led to a newspaper ad that mentioned he had once appeared in an infomercial on the noon news in Denver in the 1980s. That, in turn, led to the basement of a private home where a former television station employee had old videotapes.

For Democrats, the hunt was worth the effort - the party's autumn television commercial showed Taylor wearing an open-front shirt and gold chains, massaging a man's face.

Staggered, Taylor briefly dropped out of the race, accusing the Democrats of saying that "anybody in the beauty and hair fashion industry is homosexual."

But in politics, as the old expression goes, if you're explaining, you're losing.

"That was a silver bullet," Baucus recalls.

From a political technology standpoint, the statement, "if you're explaining, you're losing," is very, very true.

It's a fact of life. I'm not complaining. It's just one more opportunity to witness the degraded nature of us humans.