Do Americans deserve democracy? Stay tuned.

Has Rove lost control of Bush’s brain? Not that trying to make an imbecile sound coherent and thoughtful was ever an easy task, but there are signs that Rove has taken his hand off of the lever that controls the flow between Bush’s brain and his mouth. Bush seems to be thinking for himself, which means he sounds loonier than ever. Either that or the Republicans are so pathetically desperate they’ve hired Michael Savage to write Presidential speeches.

Think Progress, one of my current favorite sites, reports that Bush said to Sean Hannity that the worst thing about being President was the ugly tone in Washington, noting “I really don’t think it’s fitting for the president to drag the presidency into that kind of a mudslinging.” That was Tuesday. A day earlier on Monday, campaigning around the West, Bush told a group of supporters that his opponents, the Democrats, want America to lose and the terrorists to win.

Democrats want the terrorists to win? What’s going to be the theme of Bush’s next stump speech, “Democrats are coming to kill your babies?” I swear, if the Republicans manage to keep control of the House and Senate based on moronic scare tactics like this, there will be no question in my mind that we have the government we deserve.

I keep wanting to give the American people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to intelligence. I want to believe they are smarter than their actions indicate. The people in my life, at work, in my social circles, understand that Bush is an idiot and a grave threat to democracy. We aren’t intellectuals hanging our in Harvard square drinking espressos and smoking foreign cigarettes. We’re just working stiffs who take our kids Trick or Treating, shop at Cub and struggle to make ends meet every month.

Other than the spinmeisters at FOX and a few talk radio clowns, who in the hell takes Bush seriously? Evidently, quite a few people, which begs the question: "How can we have a functioning democracy when millions of Americans are too stupid to know they are being lied to over and over again by their own government?"

Maybe we can’t. We’ll find out in five days.