I have political fatigue.

A dream ticket that would be headed up by Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton -- on which one gifted Democrat would agree to have the other's back -- is perhaps not possible in a cynical nation. Even devoted public servants are vulnerable where pride takes precedence over service and prejudice over practicality.  

Each candidate has courted John Edwards, a nice fellow who probably already would have been president if he was going to be. Maybe John Edwards is the only possible sidekick for people such as Obama or Clinton, whose own egos are substantial and whose passions may have gotten the better of them.

Maybe it's all true. She's already been vice president, says the sound byte. He's a black guy -- thus a guy to the tenth power and will stand behind no woman, says another sound byte.

Maybe both of them will surprise us and do the right thing, broker a peace and avoid the spectre of another generation of the same callous and belligerent leadership we have endured for eight years. For many military families, and familie who have lost their jobs and their homes, and their battles with diseases that could not be treated except with care afforded by health insurance benefits, it is already too late.

For so many others, there is so much reason left to hope that partisan passions really can't be allowed to carry the day.

Both Democratic candidates have offered us hope. No matter how many accusations each hurls at the other, or others hurl at each of them, both have them have inspired the disenfranchised. They have, as the old saying goes, comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable. 

That is what the process of political winnowing is supposed to do.

It has never been polite and decorous. It was not for Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, nor for the columnists and cartoonists of their time. It was not for Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy (who presented amazingingly similar agendas) nor for the columnists and cartoonists of their time. 

It should be better.

People should behave better.

I hope that the better angels of their natures, as one of the four men mentioned above said, will prevail.

But for a time at least, I have drama fatigue.

I'll write no more blogs for a while about this seemingly Phyrric battle that has so absorbed me it's drawn me off my job -- which is to tell stories about worlds that I create.

In those worlds, the stakes are high, but they aren't real.

Right now, I prefer them.