in the future, politicians will be even more foolish

Whatever you think of Karl Rove, he does explain the problems inherent in the “endless campaign” [e.a.]:

A general election campaign that lasts nine months will bore (even more than it has in the past) the American people. It will certainly work to the disadvantage of the better-known candidate, who could appear as yesterday’s news and uninteresting when compared to a fresh face. Some of the candidates already seem like overly familiar figures — and not a single vote has yet been cast.

The media will be partly to blame. By next spring (at the latest), journalists will have tired of the candidates and their messages and demand they say or do something new, different and controversial, or they will be made to suffer. The result of all this is that we’re putting pressure on candidates to act in ways that have nothing to do with how well they will govern. The purpose of a campaign ought to be the opposite.

Perhaps a campaign ought to be sober, but this is the system we democracy-loving Americans have chaotically devised in our let’s-fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants way.

We Americans hate politicians. If they’re such smarty-pants and so eager to profit from the privileges that come with high office—and so eager to rule over us and enforce what they think is in our best interst—let them make it through the tests we devise. Let them earn our votes.

It’s the American way.