Governor Mario Cuomo is posting a series of essays on DMIBlog this week, the reading of which is well worth your time.

The current essay, "Campaign in Poetry, Govern in Prose" poses a challenge to the Democrats running for the Presidency.

It’s hard to recall a time in the modern history of presidential elections when we had before us as many vital issues. That makes it more regrettable that some of the leading candidates for President are avoiding being specific about how they intend to deal with those issues.

The proliferation of candidates, the reluctance of leaders in the polls to engage in meaningful probing debate and the extraordinarily early primary season, threaten to give us another primary campaign of sound bites, elusive responses and negativism with dominant roles being played by polls, the power of money and the unpredictability of situation-altering incidents and co-incidents.

In fairness, while he's certainly observing a real phenomenon, that doesn't arise only from the candidates' timidity. It comes equally from a poisonous media discourse, trained to smack down any original thought as 'controversial' and caught up in a horserace mentality.

Want better candidates with better ideas? Then work towards better media. In that context, it's quite encouraging that the governor is publishing this series on a Progressive blog, and not in the dead-tree-sphere.