US Election: Is it just a big stand-up comedy marathon?

In the last couple of days I've been watching CNN quite a bit, and the impression I get is that all these rallies held by the candidates are just stand-up comedy performances held to mock the opponents, whomever they might be at any given moment:

• Obama mocking H. Clinton (but not any more, as they are now United for Change)
• Joe Biden mocking Obama (later switching to McCain as the punchbag)
  
• McCain mocking Obama using clips of Biden mocking Obama... and so on.

Based on this one could think the race is about finding the new host for The Daily Show, and not a president who would have to fill some big shoes.

Oxford humour

I've been leafing through my Oxford Dictionary of Politics, and there are a few entries where the editors or writers have used irony. Here are the two examples I've found so far:

Dyad:

Pair [...]. The term is most often used in international relations research, especially peace studies, where all dyads are examined to investigate the causes of war [...] It turns out there are few wars between Switzerland and Nepal.

Social choice:

Most work has been so mathematically uncompromising that neither politicians nor political scientists have understood it, nor have social choice theorists bothered to explain themselves.

The dictionary itself is very well written and I have found many interesting topics in it when I was studying for my exams and just had to take a break. I would usually start by looking up the topics I was studying and then just wander around until I realized again that I should be studying. Anyhow, my exams, and the fact that I ordered some other volumes of the Oxford Paperback Reference series should go in a different post.