We hold these truths to be self-evident, that after more than 20 debates between the leading Democrats, both candidates are exhausted and have exhausted every conceivable debate question. That the debate format is itself a televised form of tyranny that has crushed the imagination of political junkies and TV producers across the nation.

So it was in Philadelphia for the 21st debate of this nomination contest, where Pennsylvania’s voters have surely earned the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness after five weeks of endless political ads and candidates on bus tours.

How exhausted is the debate format? ABC’s producers were so desperate for new ideas that they resorted to quoting sections of the Constitution after every commercial break. (The first ad break came only three minutes into the debate, suggesting that ABC was more interested in generating revenue than reviving interest in the founding clauses of the nation.)

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Both candidates slipped into weary roles. Clinton played the role of reluctant aggressor. It pained her that Republicans would punch Obama in the face in the general election, but she felt compelled to help her own party by punching him in the face first. “I know Senator Obama’s a good man and I respect him greatly,” she said, as she accused him of befriending a terrorist. “But I think that this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising.”

A few minutes later, she was bemoaning how those awful Republicans would surely also want to raise the issue of Obama’s preacher’s alleged admiration for Louis Farrakhan and terrorists again, this time in the form of Hamas. “You know, these are problems. And they raise questions in people’s minds,” she explained. “And so, this is a legitimate area, as everything is, when we run for office, for people to be exploring and trying to find answers.” Everything has legitimacy if Republicans might have questions–an attitude that was not displayed by the Clintons through the 1990s.

Obama played the role of the aggrieved outsider. He was tired of the old distractions, fake outrage and personal attacks, just like the voters–especially over his own mis-statements. But he also couldn’t help it if his over-exuberant campaign aides engaged in some old-fashioned distractions, fake outrage and personal attacks–some of them over Clinton’s mis-statements. “You know, I haven’t commented on the issue of Bosnia,” he said. “Your campaign has,” interjected George Stephanopoulos. “Of course,” said Obama without a hint of irony. “Because we’re asked about it…I think Senator Clinton deserves the right to make some errors once in a while. Obviously, I make some as well. I think what’s important is to make sure that we don’t get so obsessed with gaffes that we lose sight of the fact that this is a defining moment in our history.”

That didn’t stop ABC devoting much of its precious debate time to gaffes, flaps and other campaign trivia like flag pins. It turns out that after a year of an extraordinary Democratic contest, with two history-making candidates, you can have too much of a good thing. TV debates can turn stale and ridiculous, just like the second season of Desperate Housewives. Is it really possible to long for Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel to return to a microphone? Or is that proof that Clinton and Obama have said everything they can about one another?

The best moments of the debate were voyeuristic in nature, watching the candidates squirm on their own mistakes, like the bug-eating contests on Fear Factor. Clinton was forced to chew an entire Bosnia story. “I can tell you that I may be a lot of things,” she said. “But I’m not dumb. And I wrote about going to Bosnia in my book in 2004. I laid it all out there. And you’re right. On a couple of occasions in the last weeks, I just said some things that weren’t in keeping with what I knew to be the case and what I had written about in my book. And, you know, I’m embarrassed by it. I have apologized for it. I’ve said it was a mistake. And it is, I hope, something that you can look over because, clearly, I am proud that I went to Bosnia.”

Obama almost gagged on Reverend Wright’s comments, suggesting that he had disowned a pastor he said he could never disown. “You know, the notion that somehow that the American people are going to be distracted once again by comments not made by me, but somebody who is associated with me that I have disowned, I think doesn’t give the American people enough credit,” he said. “You’ve disowned him?” asked Stephanopoulos. “The comments, comments that I’ve disowned,” Obama said.

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