Political campaigns have turned into gossip wars, and I kind of want to know if this is because journalists can’t be bothered to talk about issues, if their audience can’t understand anything deeper than “ha ha elevator shooz”, if journalists have to fill so much time that they’ve exhausted issues, or if their audience just doesn’t care about issues. I don’t think it’s a particularly new phenomenon - I remember mockery of Jimmy Carter for his peanut farm - but it sure does seem a lot louder now.