And what will we have to show for it?

4 Billion Dollars. That’s the amount of money spent on the midterm elections this year.

Its a staggering sum-especially when you consider that the supposed central theme of this election year is anger about money being wasted.

4 billion dollars. Thing what that money could have done put to a good use. It could be making a good dent on research for AIDS, cancer, and other scourges of our existence. For that kind of money we could fund new schools in a lot of places. We could build a high speed train system between Atlanta and Washington DC. We could do a lot of things.

Instead-as a whole- the country wasted it on this:

I am no political theorist. But here is a concept that seems obvious to me. If you populate government with ignorant people, or with people who avowedly disrespect government, or with people whose background and experience and public integrity in no way merit political office, sooner or later you will have worse governance. The same is true if you elect leaders following political campaigns that overflow with hysteria. Four billion dollars spent to scare voters. Four billion spent to preserve the lobbyists’ hold on Washington. Garbage in, garbage out. “Everything is amplified,” Jon Stewart said Saturday at his “Restore Sanity” rally, “so nothing gets heard.”

Unbelievable. And what is truly appalling is that people are putting up with it. In the case of the Tea Party-they are actively encouraging collective ignorance. AS Bloomberg noted recently-in this election cycle, barely 3-out 10 Americans know the true facts about the economy and what’s happened to it since 2008. (I’ll have more on this later).

4 billion dollars. Wasted. The Tea Bag nation must be so proud of themselves.

This is no way to run a railroad (or a country).

Indeed, the 2010 crop of campaign insanity, unleashed by Citizens United, explains precisely why the “Restore Sanity” rally with Stewart and Stephen Colbert has resonated so well. A great many people, and especially a great number of younger people, want adults in Washington who will act with foresight and selflessness. And this includes the media estalishment. The ralliers are skeptical of a politics-centric media they see in self-sustaining partnership with the engines of the political campaigns. These people want smart candidates. They want even smarter elected officials. And they don’t want to feel like they are being played by Establishment journalists. They don’t see the wisdom they know democracy needs in and around Washigton; instead, they see high comedy, a tragi-comedy really, unfolding on their watch.

Democracy demands wisdom. But this year, all democracy seems to have offered is Christine O’Donnell, with her proud ignorance, and Alvin Greene, with his own baffling riff, and dozens of other candidates unworthy of our respect, let alone our votes. It has given us a candidate, California’s Meg Whitman, who wants so desperately to be elected that she was willing to spend nearly $200 million of her own money to do so, a fact which ought to legally disqualify her from politics again. And it has given us Sarah Palin, the avatar of the naton’s latest know-nothing movement, looming in the wings. Friends, this is no way to run a democracy, much less a wise one.