Please, don't feed the egos.

We, the press, have a lot of time to think on the trail of The Straight Talk Express. The McCain campaign cordons off the majority of the day for meetings, allowing for brief question and answer sessions once daily, and primarily allowing us to tag along like yapping sycophants sponging up every word the presumptive Republican nominee utters. And we do. And then we scuttle off to diners and bars and book stores and libraries and local monuments to see what the man on the street thinks of McCain's policies and positions. And then we collect our notes, organize them into cogent and occasionally coherent nuggets of journalese and submit them to our various editors via the world wide web. And then we sleep. We breathe, eat, drink, and sleep the world of one man.

I woke up this morning with a headache. I have to be up before five a.m. every day so I can get off the bus before the McCain team gets on. That way Joe, the Straight Talk driver, doesn't get in any trouble for letting me use the bus as my hotel. This morning I grabbed a smattering of the day's newspapers and, much to the chagrin of the McCain operatives, found myself buried in The New York Times. And, today more than normal, the names and faces of the political and business elite are stewing in scandal, miring in financial or personal catastrophe, tearing at each other's throats, and winnowing their way out of the kind of crises that would send you and me into complete paralysis. I'm so engaged that I need to be tapped on the shoulder by the same driver Joe to let me know that the bus will be pulling out and I should probably not be leaning on it when it does.

And I'm thinking, now that I've digested all the media tripe I can for one morning, that maybe this mess is all my fault. I know politics is a circus and that the men and women who occupy its center ring are there for their own gratification much more than they are for the banners of reform or progress. And I know that when we, the people, finally give them the center ring all to themselves that they'll use it for themselves first and for whatever directly benefits their interests second and then they'll start in on friends and family and the like and someday, if the media would just leave them alone long enough, they'll get to you and me, the people, and whatever our concerns were when you gave them control of that center ring. Someone was taking notes, right? And the real kicker is that I know this game, know what little it accomplishes, and yet I choose to dedicate my time to codifying and disseminating it in edible nuggets. Because I, here, think the ringleader is actually going to do something for us. I hope and pray and sometimes give the person another two or four or six years to accomplish something for someone other than himself. And then, when he doesn't, I get pissed, pack up my toys, and go write about someone else. I'm the problem then, aren't I?