If you don’t know who Taylor Branch is, he won a Pulitizer Prize for his three-book America in the King Years biography of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement.  I’m only midway through the first book, but already the level of research, detail, and insight is staggering.  So imagine my surprise to see a lecture-turned-New York Times op-ed by Branch this week titled “The Last Wish of Martin Luther King” making this argument:

The watchword of political discourse has degenerated from “movement” to “spin.” In Dr. King’s era, the word “movement” grew from a personal inspiration into leaps of faith, then from shared discovery and sacrifice into upward struggle, spawning kindred movements until great hosts from Selma to the Berlin Wall literally could feel the movement of history.

Now we have “spin” instead, suggesting that there is no real direction at stake from political debate, nor any consequence except for the players in a game. Such language embraces cynicism by reducing politics to entertainment.

Considering the fact that I run a blog called Train Wreck Politics with the tagline “Rubbernecking the disaster of the 2008 election,” that analysis amounts to a bit of a guilt trip for me.

But in defense of politics as entertainment, you could argue that the blogosphere, cable news networks, The Daily Show/Colbert Report, drive-time talk radio, and every news division that is pressured to turn a profit (which is pretty much all of them these days)– all entities that benefit in some way from the concept of entertaining political discussion– you could argue that the rise of all of those has helped spark a historic level of interest in politics, which is the first step on the long road to public activism and reform.

You could argue that a public that is caught up in the drama and suspense of the horserace, a public that engages in incessant poll-watching and surrogate policing, is going to be more educated on the issues by simple proximity.  You could also argue that there are worse ways to spend your time than keeping up with politics.  People are going to be entertained by one thing or another.  Is it better to have an electorate that spends its time reading People magazine, following the antics of Britney Spears, and watching American Idol (which– full disclosure– I watch religiously), or one that spends its time reading DailyKos/Michelle Malkin, following the developments of Barack Obama/John McCain, and watching Hardball/Hannity & Colmes?

But I see what Branch is saying about politics as entertainment.  Within the positive effect of a more informed public, there is the potential danger of a more biased, polarized, and cynical public.  For every Rush Limbaugh listener who comes away from each day’s show a better citizen, probably five or six come away thinking John McCain and Barack Obama are Communists.

There is also the danger of our tendency, in the midst of these heated campaigns, to trivialize and drown out important issues with debates about who’s wearing a flag pin, who’s laugh is more irritating, and who’s precinct captain in Montana said what.  There’s room for all that, but there’s also a line that can be crossed and should be minded by the countless political minstrels, myself included.

With all that said, we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.  Courtesy of Politico, the 50 greatest political moments of all-time:

At Politico, we love politics for some of the same reasons people love sports: the endless human drama.

Unlike a lot of people, of course, we don’t have the freedom — or, truth be told, the desire — to root for one side or the other to win. But we do have a clear preference for great characters and for watching how they react during moments of high pressure.