Although we (and by we I mean, as always, the American people) don’t believe anything our leaders tell us anymore, the political candidates this year act as if they only just discovered this. They think we’ve always accepted the quirky, zany universe portrayed in their press conferences — an alternate reality much like our own, except that national policy-makers get most of their advice from strangers at pizza parlors, and even the most heart-rending personal tragedies can be fixed by a legislative subcommittee.

Viz:

Excerpt From Al Gore’s Stump Speech:
“Mona Klakmeyer has been in a partial coma for 97 years and can only eat baby food. I have brought her with me tonight, and Mona, I promise that when I’m President, we will take sub-clause 22(a) in section C of your medical claims form and move it down next to sub-clause 16 of section F, so sub-clause 5(d) in section J might read a little clearer.”
(Convention crowd goes nuts. Campaign volunteers tear off their shirts and cover their chests with blue glitter paint. CNN cameramen scream like Cherokees and burst into flames.)

But I digress. What’s interesting is that our politicians are now waging credibility wars — having figured out that we don’t believe them, but not having figured out that we’re never going to believe them.

Locally, Congressman Bill Pascrell is hopping around like an angry terrier because his Republican opponent Anthony Fusco accused him of supporting a bill that would limit lawsuits by people who became ill from asbestos. Pascrell did no such thing. He merely said he wants to establish an agency to resolve worker lawsuits. I feel pretty good about that because, as I interpret it, that’s close to saying nothing.

Nationally, George W. Bush (known as the Charlie Sheen of politics) is catching some heat from his first debate with Al Gore (known as the Al Gore of politics), because Bush claimed his tax plan would make the wealthiest Americans pay a higher percentage of the total federal income taxes gathered than they do now. This is a complicated matter, but to put it briefly, a bipartisan Joint Tax Committee of Congress studied the numbers on that and concluded that Bush is kind of an idiot.

In the meantime, Bush criticized Gore for saying he visited wildfire disaster sites in Texas with federal emergency management chief James Lee Witt. It turns out Witt wasn’t actually there on that trip, and that, in addition, James Lee Witt is just a stuffed beaver that Gore talks to when he’s feeling lonely and abandoned.

So I will clear up a few falsehoods as a service to you, my almost entirely hypothetical reader:

Claim: Al Gore has the pulse of an petrified oak log, and George W. Bush looks like he used to murder cats.
Fact: Al Gore actually has the pulse of igneous rock, and George Bush looks more like he used to spit on handicapped kids.

Claim: If multi-millionaire Jon Corzine doesn’t win New Jersey’s U.S. Senate election, he’ll just buy the whole state.
Fact: Jon Corzine owns me and every member of my family, so I’d feel safer if we laid off this topic.

Claim: Bush says Gore has outspent him on the presidential campaign. Gore’s aides say Bush spent twice as much leading up to the election than Gore did.
Fact: My own research reveals that each man has spent more money than God, and that they should both just shut up.

Claim: With this whole asbestos thing, Bill Pascrell must think cancer is a good thing.
Fact: Pascrell, in reality, thinks cancer is a bad thing. And so do I. So I’m voting for him.