I’m feeling increasingly disconnected from the whole election madness, I admit it.

Last night after dinner I swtiched on the telly and started watching CNN for the primary results. There really weren’t any at that point — yeah, yeah, Rhode Island, who cares? — but CNN and FNC were both in full-coverage mode, legions of talking heads filling dead air with speculations and prognostications. After 20 minutes or so I found myself thinking this is really, really boring and switched off.

Any chance we can get a sense of proportion here? These people are vying for head job in the federal government. Now, the federal government is utterly dysfunctional. Its actual capabilities, under any conceivable leadership, peter out just the other side of delivering mail. Our billion-dollar intelligence agencies know squat. Our big entitlement programs are all headed for fiscal cliff edges. The Department of Education is sunk in puerile fantasies about there being no such thing as dumb kids. (Worse than that, even: they operate on the principle that there is no such thing as an un-bookish kid.) Does anyone know what the Departments of Energy, Labor, Transportation, and the Interior do? I’ll guarantee, whatever it is, they do it badly. The one function we ought to be able to depend on the federal government doing, protection of our coasts and borders, has essentially been abandoned — Mark Krikorian’s forthcoming book makes that clear in full and gruesome detail.

I really believe we would be as well, or as badly, governed if the Chief Executive were chosen by lots from among a pool of willing citizens who had passed a modest general knowledge test and background check. For sure we are not going to get a philosopher king out of the current process, even assuming we wanted one — which, as a republic of free citizens, we ought not.

Bill Buckley famously asked: “Who is the President of Switzerland?” Nobody knows, of course; yet Switzerland seems to get along pretty well. Is all this hullabaloo really necessary? Can anyone give me a good reason why I should go on wading through the reams of commentary and prediction on Mrs Clinton’s this and Baracl Obama’s that and what McCain should or shouldn’t do and what a grand fellow Huckabee is? I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.