In America, politicians and everyone else use language for anything except to talk clearly about things that matter.

Why? As the Greek playwright Aeschylus apparently wrote 2,500 years ago, “In war, truth is the first casualty.”

This very minute, keyboards click as blog posters debate whether Ann Coulter or Bill Maher is the more objectionable windbag. (Rosie O’Donnell outranks both of them, if you ask me.)

But this little episode is but a calming zephyr compared to the hot air soon to be expelled in a presidential campaign primed to be the most acrimonious since the invention of television.

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No sitting president or vice-president will be a contender for the first time since 1952. Both parties stand in ideological disarray. The 24-hour cable networks need an election as compelling as the previous two.

And then there’s Hillary Clinton, whose candidacy will be both the source and the target of much showy rhetoric. Sen. Clinton knows she is a polarizing figure, and her campaign so far has sought to avoid saying anything to drive away either the far left she needs for the nomination or the moderate voters she needs in the general election.

In football, playing the “prevent defense” often lets your opponent grab the momentum and get back in the game. Sen. Barack Obama has done just that with his feel-good rhetoric and consistent opposition to the Iraq war. And Sen. Clinton is scrambling to get the ball back.

All that she has come up with so far is a vague promise about Iraq and a clumsy gesture to keep black voters from Obama’s camp.

“If we in Congress don’t end this war before January 2009, as president, I will,” Sen. Clinton said last month. She has offered no specifics on how or when she might end the war, which she will need to do if she wants to outflank Sen. Obama.

Sen. Clinton followed Sen. Obama to Selma, Ala., last week, bringing husband Bill Clinton, apparently because of his popularity with black voters. (This was after the Clinton camp sent warnings through the media that talking about President Clinton’s impeachment would not be acceptable to Sen. Clinton.)

But her speech there was uncomfortable and condescending. Not only was her attempt at mimicking the Rev. James Cleveland the worst Southern accent captured on film since Robert DeNiro’s in “Cape Fear,” it was brazenly offensive — or would have been if she weren’t a Democrat. Had President Bush or Newt Gingrich done it, the left and the media would be comparing the performance to a blackface minstrel show.

The worst verbal errors of the campaign, though, have come from Sens. Obama and John McCain, who both described the American lives lost in Iraq as “wasted.” The press dutifully reported their assertions that they should have used the word “sacrifice,” and then moved on to the next topic. But sacrifice and waste mean very different things, and politicians who make their living saying things in front of people should not be allowed to take a mulligan every time they want one.

George Orwell said that thought can corrupt language, and language can corrupt thought. If we begin accept the notion that the lives of well-trained volunteers are being wasted — spent for a worthless cause — in Iraq, then we will more easily believe that any costly effort in Iraq or the war on terrorism is worthless.

But the soldiers who have sacrificed — surrendered something prized for a greater purpose — themselves deserve better from us in thought and action. They probably won’t get it from this campaign.

Aaron Keith Harris writes about politics, the media, pop culture and music and is a regular contributor to National Review Online and Bluegrass Unlimited. He can be reached at aaronkeithharris@gmail.com.