In a perfect world…

• We’d have heard heavy metal at the Republican convention, and annoying, twangy country “music” at the Democrat-ick one.
• No one would bother debating the alleged merits of the “assault” weapons ban, except maybe with respect to the limit on magazine capacity. All other public references to the ban would be for the sole purpose of ridiculing Dianne Feinstein for coming up with such a dumb idea in the first place.
• Professional journalists would routinely debunk the naive musings of amateur bloggers, not the other way around.
• Ra^thergate would end Dan Rather’s career and bankrupt CBS, but have no impact on the Presidential election unless it can be shown that either candidate’s campaign was directly involved - and even then only if the candidate himself knew or should have known about it.
• Maureen Dowd’s career as a journalist would have ended around the same time that the word dowdify became a widely-understood verb.
• Chris Matthews’s career would have ended when he conned Michelle Malkin into coming onto his show to discuss Japanese internment, only to switch the subject to the Swift Vets and then put words in her mouth to get her to admit that John Kerry intentionally “shot” himself with a hand grenade, and then kick her off the show before her real topic even came up.
• Speaking of Michelle Malkin, she would be able to pose in Playboy if she wanted (granted, she probably wouldn’t want to, but a man is allowed to dream, right?) and we would still take her opinions seriously.
• And speaking of Chris Matthews, Zell Miller would have actually gotten to challenge him to a duel.
• Unfit for Command would either be proven to be a complete and total hoax, or it would John Kerry’s political career, and seriously injure the political career of any major politicians who endorsed him early on.
• Lying to persuade gullible people to elect an autocratic government that will impact everyone’s life would be at least as serious a crime as lying to sell a crappy product where the only real risk is to relieve these gullible people of their own money.
• No one would make profound-sounding distinction between privileges and rights (as against the government), between freedom and liberty, between democracies and republics, or between synonyms and words that mean the same thing.
• No one other than Pat Buchanan, Susan Estrich, Andrew Sullivan, Paul Begala, James Carville, Geraldine Ferraro, Mary Anne Marsh or Matthew Yglesias Oliver Willis would give a flying phuck what Pat Buchanan, Susan Estrich, Andrew Sullivan, Paul Begala, James Carville, Geraldine Ferraro, Mary Anne Marsh or Matthew Yglesias Oliver Willis think about any issue - or even if any of them think at all.