First, a lesson in how statistics work. This is addressed chiefly to CNN.

You see, if a candidate is two points ahead of another candidate, but the margin of error for that poll is more than two points, then there is no definitive statement that can be made about that poll. Yet, time and again, news outlets report that one candidate is inching out another by mere millimeters even though the margin between the candidates is well within the margin of error for the poll. Example: if a poll says that 34% of people support Hillary, but 32% support Barack Obama, and the margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points, then who wins the poll? The CNN answer -- and subsequent headline -- is, "Hillary ekes out two-point lead over Obama." The real answer is that the actual poll results could conceivably be that Obama has 35% and Hillary has 31%!

Okay. On to the show.

Here we are, ten years into a twenty-year long political campaign, and what do we have to show for it? Examine the situation: President Bush is a lame duck president facing off against a Congress controlled by the opposing party. A minority of the country supports him, and he has led the country into an expensive war that will be in its fifth year this March. This president has decimated civil liberties, destroyed science, and alienated every moderate person in the world with his cavalier, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later "Don't mess with [the popular caricature of] Texas" style of governance. You'd think that all a candidate would have to do is be breathing in order to gain support. Terri Schiavo for president!

But it's not so. No candidate has emerged that is truly the winner. The Democrats have three plausible contenders: Obama, Clinton, and John Edwards. Any one of these people has a shot at the nomination. Seriously. But they poll very close to each other. It's almost as though they're -- dare I say it -- indistinguishable from one another.

The Republicans are faring worse. There has been no Republican savior, no heir to the Reagan mantle. Fred Thompson was touted as the true scion, but after his three months on the road, he's closer to winning the Grampa Munster Lookalike Contest than the presidency. Rudy Giuliani has enthralled his supporters but scared the bejeezus out of the rest of us. John McCain is that Little Engine That Wants To, but his staunch support of the Iraq war and even torture (!) in some cases makes us suspicious. And at the end of the day, no matter how hard Bush beats him, he comes back, insisting, "It was my fault. Bush really is a good person. It's just that sometimes he wants to win so much that he spreads rumors about me in South Carolina." Mike Huckabee is just as frightening as Giuliani, but he hates gays more. Mitt Romney is an android.

Sadly, in the Republican camp, no one is coming out on top. Again, Terri Schiavo should be able to do it. Sure, Mike Huckabee won Iowa in a surprise victory, but McCain won New Hampshire. At the end of the day, there is no one candidate who appeals to all people. Where is the Super Candidate? The Republicans have spent eight years in the White House because they're good at keeping the team together: stay on message, or Karl Rove will eat your skull.

Instead of a spicy burrito of a campaign with many different, exotic ingredients, this election -- like most others -- has turned instead into a gray, indiscernible goulash that doesn't taste much like anything but smells a lot like money. It's appalling that we're in the state that we're in right now: the White House is ripe for the picking, but no one can figure out how to build a ladder to pick it.