The third presidential debate was depressing. The whole election season is. Not the candidates, not the mud slinging, not the lack of real options, not the lack of sensible policies, not the woefully bad ideas from both sides, but how the whole mess is handled by the media, the political class and the public at large. How the real questions and concerns did not even make it into the debates, let alone being discussed in any reasonable way. How hopelessly partisan everyone involved became. How even ‘facts’ became partisan. There was one particular moment in the debate, one particular claim, one particular miss that may illustrate the problem best: Hillary Clinton made the claim that the Obama administration reduced the deficit by two thirds. The claim went completely unchallenged. Nobody asked how is it possible then that the national debt doubled during the same time? Where did the debt come from? Where did it go? It must be said that Hillary did not come up with the idea.