Abigael Evans captures the national mood about the presidential election campaign

From the LA Times

Abigael Evans, the 4-year-old Colorado girl who was driven to tears by the seemingly never-ending presidential campaign coverage, has received a very rare thing in our modern media age: a formal apology from NPR for making her cry.

Abigael became a minor Internet star earlier this week when her mother, Elizabeth, posted a video online of the girl when she became upset after hearing a little too much of "Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney" on the radio. [....]

This account can't compete with the video itself, which you can watch above.

=> It's hard not to sympathize with Abigael. Those of us who are adults know, or should know, that presidential elections are very important and worth paying attention to. But there's no good reason why they have to go on forever. It might be worth it if the increasing length of these endless campaigns gave us more serious, substantive, detailed, and informative discussions and debates about important national issues. But they don't.

Meanwhile, between now and Tuesday all of us should resist any temptation to tune out and remember that the stakes in this election are very high. If Romney and the Republicans prevail on Tuesday (which now looks like the less likely outcome, but might still happen), then we will all have plenty to cry about for the next four years (even those of you who decide, for some reason, to vote for the Romney/Ryan ticket).

Yours for democratic citizenship,
Jeff Weintraub