DRAFT! Work in progress!

This election needs to be about more than lipstick, hockey moms, and Blackberries -- or it will truly be a bridge to nowhere. It is time to talk about the Constitution and how the two candidates propose to undo the damage of the past eight years.

The American people are ready for this -- in fact, they are hungry for this. But the media and campaign consultants are contriving to make this a small election about small things, instead of a watershed election about the most important issue of all: our liberties and the system of government that exists to preserve those liberties, not tear them down or whittle away at them behind closed doors.

The "Get FISA Right" sprung up virtually overnight in early July, becoming the largest group on the Obama campaign web site. We challenged Senator Obama when he supported the FISA Amendment Act with its warrantless surveillance and telecom immunity giveaway. We placed ads during the Republican convention reminding viewers of the GOP role in the passage of that law, and announcing a movement that was putting the Constitution above politics.

Other groups of citizens -- liberal, conservative, progressive, and libertarian alike -- have tried to raise these issues as well. So far, it hasn't been enough.

But this is America: a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We haven't come this far to let our freedoms perish from the earth just because they don't neatly fit in a 24 hour news cycle. That's why we ask -- that's why we demand -- that

• presidential candidates take questions and present their views on constitutional issues
  
• editorial boards write about restoring the rule of law and our basic rights
  
• journalists report on and analyze --before the election -- how the candidates would exert their executive authority as President. (Charlie Savage and the Boston Globe did this late last year; it's time for a remake.)

In addition, we believe it is critical that the televised debates between Obama and McCain pose questions about constitutional issues like warrantless electronic surveillance, torture, abrogation of habeas corpus, accountability for past high crimes and misdemeanors, and how to restore our Constitution.

Both presidential candidates claim the mantle of "change", and the media judge them by their slogans. But here is the change they -- and all of us -- should be talking about: we the people, taking back our election, and making it about preserving freedom, human dignity, and the rule of law. Our country and democracy once inspired the world. Let's make that true again.