We get the Government that we deserve

After reading this from Pierre Tristam I am convinced that Americans don't want change as much as they don't want to be proven wrong about their judgement the last 8 years.

The McPalin campaign knows.
No need for rumors and innuendoes. It flat-out lies. Repeats the lies. Then lies again when the lies are exposed. There's Palin's lie about the infamous Bridge to Nowhere: She campaigned for it, then kept the $223 million in federal tax dollars when Washington killed its support. Still, she keeps repeating her "thanks but no thanks" line rally after rally. There's Palin's lie about how "we began a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence," as she told the Republican convention, even though not an inch of that pipeline has been built, not an inch will be built for years, and it may never be built at all. There's Palin's lie about being an ethical reformist even though she thought nothing of billing taxpayers for 312 nights spent at home, at $60 a night, on days she commuted 45 minutes to her governor's office in Anchorage.

Then there's McCain's fantasies about balancing the budget while cutting taxes, fighting wars and "changing the tone of Washington" while slandering Barack Obama's darkish background. It's what Justice William Brennan once defined, in a different context, the reckless disregard for the truth.

But to succeed, deception needs a receptive audience. It needs the incurious, the unquestioning, the toadying. The effectiveness of the lies, in a year when comatose fleas should capably beat the shrewdest Republican, is telling -- not about the candidates' venality, but about the electorate's want: This isn't an election about change. It's an election about extending the denial that made the last eight years possible. Many Americans, maybe most, want to convince themselves that America's moral authority and example is undiminished despite the last eight years. (And who can blame them? Who doesn't wish it weren't so?) The last thing those brave Americans want is change. They want leadership that validates their delusion. Palin-McCain is their narcotic bridge to nowhere