For those of you who missed the most recent debate between Senators Clinton and Obama on ABC, let me quote the Washington Post's Tom Shales on the "shoddy, despicable performances" by moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos and (in spirit), Jerry Springer.

"For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show," Shales noted, "Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news."

If nearly an hour of pharmaceutical spots, flag pins, fluffed lines, and things old friends did when we were eight doesn't cut the mustard, what SHOULD we be talking about . . . and sooner rather than later?

Violations of the Constitution? Apparently not, despite ABC's fluffy window dressing of quotations from the document.

Why most Americans . . . and most Iraqis . . . and most of our friends and allies . . . want us out of Iraq? No!

Thoughts on why the Shiite Iraqi government (the one we support) calls on Iran (the Shiite government we don't support) to bail us out of a battle they lost to the Shiite Iraqi opposition? Time for a laxative commercial.

Musings about why our general-on-the-ground labels the "surge's successes" as, at best, "fragile" and "reversible?" Too complicated to take on early in the show, and too complicated for the advertisers' key demographic targets.

Why, as American casualties in Iraq approach 34,000, our leaders can't define our enemies, or victory, or even the conditions for an acceptable "peace"? Takes longer than a minute to discuss.

What's a Commander in Chief going to do about having no trained, battle-ready strategic infantry reserves and an Army reduced to accepting criminals and high-school drop-outs to meet its manpower goals? You gotta be kidding? Those guys buy COMMERCIALS.

Our banking and credit structures face crises unparalleled for more than half a century. Any thoughts? On banking? In Prime Time? Surely you jest!

Your house has lost a fifth of its value, if you can sell it, or rent it, at all? So?

Hotels abroad prefer euros to dollars, as gas prices reach for infinity and beyond, and our most important manufactured "product" is bad debt? See banking and prime time, above.

The President of the United States is pleased to announce we'll "get started" on the problems of global warming by, oh, 2025? Flag pins don't melt at a mere 104.

An agency for advanced energy research projects is established . . . but not funded? Talk about science or research? You gotta be kidding. The President still has "doubts" about evolution, and McCain gets it confused with the movie of the same name.

Rising food prices drive inflation at home and riots abroad? Obama's no good at bowling.

The Republican candidate for President can't keep our enemies or his own economic theories straight, while arguing that we "stay the Bush course" on the war and economy? Why should Democrats talk about THOSE things? Have a beer.

FISA? Subpoenas of Presidential advisors? Cabinet members facing indictment? Corruption? Fraud? Bush's public praise for waterboarding (a story ABC broke!). Not for our moderators. Perhaps the candidates should have sent Charlie and George to a corner for "quiet time" and asked each other questions.

"There is a reluctance in our time," John Kenneth Galbraith wrote a year after Nixon's resignation and pardon, "to attribute great consequences to human inadequacy -- to what, in a semantically less cautious era, was called stupidity."

Am I bitter? Good Lord. Pass me a Colt-45.