The last occasion on which an American president treated his fellow citizens with respect and shared with them an uncomfortable truth was Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address to the nation. In the first draft of that speech Eisenhower coined a term, "the military-industrial-congressio­nal complex". He warned us to be on guard against allowing too much power and influence to accrue to the web of military officers, arms manufacturers, and legislators granting contracts.

Eisenhower's advisers who read the draft deemed his new term to be too provocative. They urged him not to suggest that the representatives of the people could be corrupted by a conflict of interest. That, apparently, was a truth the people couldn't handle. Eisenhower caved and cut off one leg of his three-legged stool by letting Congress off the hook. A warning that originally put the burden of vigilance on we the people became vague and was predictably ignored.

There is a cautionary tale here. From the founding of our Republic there has been a tension implicit in the term "representative democracy". Should our representatives faithfully express the will of their constituents? Or do we select representatives for what we hope will be judgment superior to that of the common man? Or are these two extremes with a golden mean lurking somewhere in between?

Eisenhower's address directly addressed this point: "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together." What a magnificent statement, fully worthy of inclusion with the best statements of the Founding Fathers. Eisenhower forcefully reminded us that we the people hold the reins of power and that we the people cannot hold those reins passively.

Contrast that statement about the critical role of an alert and knowledgeable citizenry in a democracy with the utter contempt in which we the people are held by George W. Bush. Bush and his surrogates lied through their teeth to American citizens to con us into a war Bush craved for glory and which his accomplice and enabler, Richard B. Cheney, craved for oil loot.

In a second act, Bush has used the full machinery of the federal government to keep American citizens in the dark about his other illegal and shameful activities ranging from the torture of prisoners to warrantless domestic spying to the discrediting of American patriots dedicated to telling us the truth.

This familiar litany of Bush's "high crimes and misdemeanors" serves to illustrate how far we the people have fallen. The point isn't that Bush is utterly despicable. It's worse than that. Much worse. This insecure, shallow, sadistic, juvenile little man, incapable of moral reasoning (to expand on Steve Almond's description), stepped into a moral vacuum that we the people allowed to form in the first place. That is the uncomfortable truth that hovers over and haunts this presidential campaign.

So, John, you say that you "will not demand that [Barack Obama] commit political suicide. ... We should hold him to his basic principles, but remember that in this time and in this place, he must win." This, of course, is the perennial political dilemma. I don't envy Obama the position he is in. But if Obama is truly serious about a new kind of politics, he will turn this dilemma on its head.

The particular dilemma Obama faces, either tell the American people the harsh and necessary truth or win the election, is not a dilemma that any candidate for the American presidency should face. It is the ultimate absurdity. It is a concession that the American democratic experiment has ended in failure. It is a concession that we the people cannot govern ourselves. Well, in the immortal word of General McAuliffe, to that I say "Nuts!".

In your scenario, Sheriff Obama rides into town, clears out the bad guys, reestablishes the rule of law, and thereby puts the town back on the path to peace and prosperity. I like that scenario and I believe as you do that it will work. In the short term. But what about the long term? Suppose that conditions in the town aren't quite morally unambiguous. Suppose that the bad guys are a symptom, not a cause, and that the cause is getting worse year by year. Now suppose that Sheriff Obama is obligated to turn in his badge after eight years. What happens then?

If I were Sheriff Obama I would consider modifying your scenario. I would sit down with the townspeople before I put on the badge and I would have a little heart-to-heart talk with the people. I might ask them not what I can do for them, but what together we can do for the town. Without being too in-your-face about it, I might suggest to the townspeople that they were responsible for setting up the conditions that allowed a gang of outlaws to take over. And I might suggest to the townspeople that if they aren't willing to take responsibility for cleaning up those conditions, then they might as well consider choosing the best of the outlaws to be Sheriff.

There are two huge risks in this campaign. The first is that Barack Obama loses. The second is that Barack Obama wins under terms that will make matters far worse in the long run. The very last thing a democratic republic in moral decline needs is an infatuation with the idea that just the right leader will reverse the decline. On this point history offers the clearest, most unambiguous lesson. If you want to quickly put a democracy in moral decline out of its misery, then glom onto the idea that a heroic savior is needed to rescue the democracy.

Obama doesn't have it in his power to reverse America's moral decline. Period. Only we the people have that power in our democracy. We created the decline. We ignored the decline. We ignored warnings about the decline. We passively watched the decline get worse. We let the decline worsen into a crisis. Now we have a really simple choice. Either we the people accept responsibility for our nation's moral decline or we pass the buck to the first charismatic politician with a catchy slogan that passes by.

Am I suggesting that Obama is irrelevant? Not at all. I am suggesting that his current trajectory, if not corrected, will make him irrelevant even if he is elected. Obama has to lay out the two choices we the people face before the election. He can't make the choice for us after the election. We the people can either choose to address the root cause of America's moral decline, our self-destructive capacity for denial, delusion, distraction and self-deception or we can choose the status quo and be consigned to the dustbin of history.