As in the movie, Groundhog's Day, each day of this presidential campaign seems like a repeat of the day before.

Day after day, week after week, primary after primary, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton stay locked in the same relative positions -- he, slightly, but not convincingly, ahead in the delegate count; she, winning primaries, refusing to quit, but not finding a way to jump ahead of him. The same tired issues keep recycling -- especially the vituperative rants of Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- with scant serious discussion of the truly meaningful issues confronting our country and world.

This all started out with a much more hopeful scenario. Remember when both parties filled debate stages with squads of candidates offering voters interesting choices? Remember the excitement about electing the first woman to be president? Remember the even greater excitement about a young, mixed-race candidate who seemed poised to transform our politics, our race relations and our image in the world? All that excitement seems to have dissipated as the campaign has become mired in the muck.

True, we are now down to the three candidates who truly stood out from the crowded pack. Republicans, despite themselves, have ended up with the strongest candidate they could have chosen for the general election. John McCain's heroic story and not-entirely-accurate image as a maverick plays well with the independent voters Republicans will need to attract if they hope to win in a year when voters have soured on the Iraq War, are nervous about the economy and are overwhelmingly ready to be rid of the incumbent Republican president. Yet, McCain's luster dulls every time he displays his conventional political side -- as with his pandering proposal to suspend the federal gas tax for the summer.

If that makes him look like a hack, the same can be said for Clinton who has proposed a similar plan. Hillary has certainly shown resilience and an ability to connect with voters on the lower end of the economic scale in her tireless fight to stay alive in this race, but she is also proving that the thrill of electing a woman president is largely illusion. If she should rise to the highest office in the land, she will likely prove only that a woman can be as compromising and conventional as a man. That doesn't seem all that revolutionary.

Obama was the one who appeared to be the incarnation of true change. With the first African American president, Black Americans might finally let go of the culture of victimhood that has held them back. White Americans might finally start paying attention to the economic gap between the races that has sustained resentment in the black community. National politics might be carried out on common ground, not from two ideological camps. The face and voice representing America in the world would be suddenly different and could renew faith in this nation as a force for good on the planet.

All of that was, perhaps, too much to expect of one man. If Hillary Clinton has accomplished anything, it is that she has whittled Obama down to size. Yes, I think he could be a transformative president, but there is now a very big if attached to that premise -- if he has the skills and toughness to survive in the savage battleground of national and international politics. But, if he can't beat Hillary, bury Rev. Wright and quell the suspicions of the white working class, he may not be ready to take on Iran, Vladimir Putin, global warming, the U.S. Congress and the 24-a-day news machine.

That performance of that last entity is the most dispiriting element of this campaign. As a journalist, I am appalled and disgusted on a daily basis by what I see on the cable news channels. Actual reporting seems to have almost entirely been eliminated as a duty of these so-called newsgathering organizations. "News" now consists of talking heads asking each other to analyze poll numbers or the candidates' latest tiny gaffes. Too many of these babbling egotists are not journalists at all, but partisan veterans of past campaigns and prior administrations. Too many of the alleged journalists are mere television pundits who left whatever reporting credentials they may have had far behind. They are spin doctors for their own careers. When these people talk on for hours about the hot issues of this campaign, they are not gabbing about what's on the minds of average Americans, they are simply caught up in the media echo chamber that has distorted and debilitated this exercise in democracy.

Right now, I'm not feeling much hope that the 2008 campaign can be rescued from spin, triviality and cheap shots or from the clutches of a broadcast media in thrall to ratings, personality and gossip. Jefferson would weep.