Perhaps I shouldn’t expect that presidential candidates would engage in intelligent debate. Maybe candidates needn’t subject the content of their proposals to public scrutiny. Maybe we should just trust Obama when he tells us that we can believe in the change that he proposes. In that case, we don’t need Ralph. We wouldn’t need someone to ask the “legitimate” candidates about their detailed platforms. They could just go on proving to us that they are nice, trustworthy, friendly people who we could trust to walk our dogs.

Just for the sake of argument, this blog will assume that we do indeed need Ralph.