Can't we be smarter this time?

We Democrats have done an excellent job of nominating complete dorks who can't understand how their command of substantive policy issues means far less to voters than how they look in a helmet.

Yes, the Republicans have beaten us Democrats over the head with ridiculous non-issues like flag burning, the pledge of allegiance, gay marriage (in States where it was already illegal!), and so forth. Yet, yet, we have complete dunderheads like Dukakis and Kerry who can't figure out how to deal with it, even when the means are literally right before their eyes. I told a staffer for Kerry in 2004 that he needed to hire the Daily Show's writers to do all of his campaign commercials and Aaron Sorkin (West Wing) to write all of his speeches. The Daily Show kills the bad guys every night, simply by running video clips of them saying one thing one time and another thing on the same issue a few months later, or by running them saying the same thing over and over until the absurdity sets in (like how many times we have "turned the corner" in Iraq over the last 5 years).

In other words, our candidates have to be smarter. Running an ad of McCain saying "a hundred years" over and over, with images of American soldiers in caskets or in hospital wards would win the election even if no other commercials are added. But the same thing could be done to him on jobs and health care with little difficulty. So how is it that our candidates can raise hundreds of millions of dollars but can't spend even a little of it on imaginative ad writers and producers like those on the Daily Show?