In lieu of the upcoming election, Boise State’s student run lecture series, Vox Discipuli, hosted two nationally recognized pundits in a political debate earlier today. Is it ridiculous to anyone else that a small state school hosted a more cogent sounding debate than the recent vice presidential one?

Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg, editors, authors and avid bloggers (they actually both share a video post called ‘What’s Your Problem?’ on nationalreview.com) both came to the home of the big blue to hold a live political debate. After the debate, members of the audience were able to ask questions of the pundits.

While I was in attendance, I heard many great points, was forced to contemplate my own beliefs multiple times and was highly entertained. Above all else, I realized that some of our professional politicians *cough*Palin*cough* couldn’t hold any sort of intellectual conversation close to matching those heard at Boise State.

Politicians get paid to feed us BS and get us to side with them in this popularity contest that we call an election. The "science" in "political science" is finding a figurehead and platform which will gain the most support. Now I’m not knocking our political system, just calling it what it is. If the theoreticians were the ones making policies, we’d have a much smoother (not streamlined, that would defeat the purpose of bipartisanship and checks and balances) run government.

But the point at hand is that the powers that be think that a smooth talker like Sarah Palin is going to convince a majority of Americans to vote for them. If I were this Joe Six-pack character I keep hearing about, I’d be rather offended.