Does anybody know what’s going on out there?

No, except that it’s a time of tremendous involvement by the American people in the democratic process and their great empowerment over the media, for a change. What exciting times these are.

But following it all gets tiring at times. I go back and forth between news and sports channels a lot, or the travel channel, or history or national geographic or even C-Span, for crying out loud. Not to mention the three books I’m in the process of reading when I can steal a few moments… 

But we’re in a surge in more than one place, and it’s not going to back off anytime this year.

Okay, so it’s a weekend and time to slow down the frenetic news pace and give the more thought-provoking commentary some more thoughtful time, at least more than usual. But…it’s also another primary election day, and by evening the news people will be all over the South Carolina and Nevada returns, calling the races and figuring out what it means for the candidates and waiting breathlessly for those candidates to appear onstage somewhere for their victory/concession/rally speech to their supporters.

So a few things have aligned here in the quiet before the storm that give pause for thought. They’re little gems of enlightenment in a field of bland repetition.

Like…last evening on one of the cable news shows (can’t remember which) yet another roundtable discussion was bantering about the meaning of South Carolina if so and so wins, and whether that means momentum for this one and/or the end of the race for that one. And then one of the wiser of the four analysts said ‘this election is different from every other one we’ve faced, different candidates have won different states so far, we can’t predict what’s going to happen just ahead, and so a win in South Carolina means a win in South Carolina.’

I’m sitting there nodding. Yep, that’s right. That’s wisdom. He said ‘it is what it is’, and that’s pretty profound right now compared with all the projections and polls and analyses. It will be interesting to see by day’s end, and then we move on to the next Democratic debates on Monday (the Congressional Black Caucus sponsored one) and the Republican debate on Thursday and the next primary in South Carolina for the Democrats on January 26, and the big Floriday one everyone’s waiting for on January 29th…

Back to the moment. On a Fox News business show this morning, the question was whether economic issues have started trumping social issues in the minds of voters. After some talk about mortgages and gas prices and jobs and recession, Quentin Hardy spoke up and said he doesn’t think they’re separate issues. Economic issues are social issues, that having an affordable home and health care and a job are issues that are fundamentally social and moral. Did anybody hear that, I thought.

…No. The business guys went on to talk about Mayor Bloomberg’s ideas about Rudy Giuliani’s tax ideas, etc. etc., but then, it was a business show. I heard it though, and he’s right: economic issues are social and moral issues.

Went over to NRO and found two good pieces. This one by Byron York brings out something about Fred Thompson I’ve been noticing, but haven’t heard others talk about. Thompson is a consistent conservative, a veteran of the Senate…and he doesn’t like the machinations of political campaigning one bit. Especially as they’ve become this year, with YouTube debates serving up occasional silliness and network news moderators always demanding ‘a show of hands’ from the candidates on stage, as if they were a class of school children, and armies of reporters asking the same question about why he doesn’t look like he wants the job and speculating that he doesn’t really have a message.

Here’s his message:

“The Founding Fathers had it right from the very beginning,” Thompson said. “The wisdom of the ages, the fact that our basic rights come from God and not from government, the notion that a government big enough and powerful enough to give you anything is big enough and powerful enough to take anything away from you…respect for the rule of law…the institution of the market economy…[the belief] that if a person earned a dollar, that dollar belonged in the person’s pocket…” Those should be our guiding principles, he said.

The crowd in front of him on that election-eve campaign stop got energized. What’s he stand for? Here’s what, he said (finally).

After walking through a few issues — “a nation that cannot secure its own borders will not remain a sovereign nation”; “our principles mean that we don’t let a federal government that can’t even chew gum and tie its own shoelaces half the time take over our health-care system”; “the security of our people underlies everything else” — Thompson hit again on the main argument for his candidacy: Unlike some other candidates, he’s always been a conservative, and he always will be. “I’ve always been there,” he said, “I’m proud of my record, what you see is what you get, where I was yesterday, I am today, is where I’ll be tomorrow. I wear no man’s collar, and I’ve never been accused of changing my political opinion about something because of a political consideration.”

Where has this been until now?

Thompson spoke without notes, and with obvious feeling. He so clearly believed what he was saying that he made an emotional connection with the crowd, and they responded with enormous enthusiasm. To everyone in the audience, Friday night in Greenville was what the Thompson campaign was supposed to be about.

But the way people hear these things is mainly through media coverage, and he doesn’t fit the template. Nor does Ron Paul, certainly not Duncan Hunter, nor do any Democratic candidates beyond Sens. Clinton and Obama and sometimes Edwards.

So here’s this other article, by Michael Barone, that takes a reasoned look at American election history and raises the other “C” word – character.

Campaigns and elections are mysterious things, predictable in many respects but also full of surprises, and never more so than in this wild and woolly cycle. Character plays an ineluctable role, and we come to know pretty well our candidates’ strengths and weaknesses (which are often the same thing: Bill Clinton’s fluency-slipperiness; George W. Bush’s steadfastness-stubbornness).

Yet it’s hard for citizens of a nation with 303 million people to judge the character of candidates most will never get a chance to talk with.

And the sense we get from the press is filtered through their colored lens. After Watergate, Barone says…

Political journalism took a turn toward exposure rather than celebration, toward cynicism rather than awe.

But we don’t have to just ‘receive’ what is delivered. We can filter it through our own values.

Cynicism prevails but doesn’t sell. Ronald Reagan, who was of [author] Teddy White’s generation, and who voted for 12 winning presidential candidates and only four losers in his active adult life, knew about the tawdry things yet believed there was something noble about our politics. Maybe we should feel that way, too.