The US election has now finally descended to the playground-level festival of mudslinging that it was always destined to become. As the end of a seemingly endless campaign looms, the self-styled Greatest Nation in the World is treating itself to an all-you-can-stomach trough of slur, innuendo and patent bullshit.

This is inevitable even for a nation as touchingly besotted with democracy as America. As the great Jane Austen herself wrote in her school politics project: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you lock a campaign manager alone in a completely empty concrete room, he will, somehow, from somewhere, find some mud and sling it.”

History is festooned with great figures brought down by mudslinging - dead philosophy ace Socrates, world-famous is-he-isn't-he Messiah Jesus, and ex-Democratic candidate and disappointment John Kerry, to name but three. (Recent archaeological finds suggest that David took out Goliath with a single compacted bit of mud, slung with the invincible power and accuracy of a sudden revelation about a political candidate's sexual past.)

Science has proved that, over the course of a campaign, slinging mud can be up to 3 per cent more effective than constructive debate, and the beauty is that it requires little skill, accuracy or research. It just requires mud, and a sling.

Sarah Palin's suggestions that Barack Obama has been “palling around” with a terrorist might strike some as the wilfully delusional prating of a political desperate, but by the time the Undecideds hover over their ballots on November 4, all that will be remembered is Mr Obama having some vague link with al-Qaeda or something, and the fact that he isn't, but could be, a Muslim, based on his middle name. Barack Hussein Obama is no more a Muslim than George Walker Bush is a device to help old people move around, but the mud has been slung, and some will perceive it to have stuck.

Mrs Palin's running-mate, John McCain, found himself scraping entirely made-up mud off his own campaign in 2000, mud flung on to him by his own party - claims that he had fathered an illegitimate black baby transpired to have omitted to include either the word “not” before the word “fathered”, or the words “adopted a Bangladeshi orphan” instead of “fathered an illegitimate black baby”. Perhaps, in the heat of electoral battle, such trifling linguistic mistakes are inevitable.

The internet has given rise to increasingly wideranging and infantile mudslinging techniques, with teams of experts carefully calibrating the optimum opacity of mud and trajectory of sling to ensure maximum splattage. For all its undoubted benefits - such as the increased availability of sporting trivia, true and false - the web is the single greatest advance in the science of deliberate malinformation since the development of human speech (a breakthrough that proved a mixed blessing for democracy).

The Bugle also urges its readers and/or listeners to remember that modern democracy is not about winning. It is about stopping someone else winning.

A bit fishy

Mrs Palin has been in the vanguard of this Charge of the Slight Brigade, wildly brandishing her sword of at-best-partial truth, and confirming her burgeoning reputation as potentially the most terrifying vice-president since Dick Cheney.

She may be the unthinking man's Hazel Blears, but it is increasingly clear to The Bugle how Mrs Palin earned her nickname of “The Barracuda”. Just like a barracuda, the Shriller from Wasilla: (a) is a merciless predator; (b) knows little about major political issues; (c) is particularly shaky on foreign policy; (d) can seem uncomfortable during a one-on-one interview and (e) is not what you would ideally want to be one heartbeat or ropey kebab away from running the most powerful country in the world*. The similarities are genuinely uncanny.

The money game

News that the Sir Allen Stanford Cricket For Cash™ match will go ahead comes as a blessed relief to three social groups: the cricketers involved, Sir Allen Stanford, and all those who enjoy seeing sport reduced to nothing more than the meaningless pursuit of hard currency. No genuine sport fans have ever tingled with anticipation before a match, in the hope of seeing their heroes earn more. No one at this year's Wimbledon final shouted out: “Come on Nadal, you can make an extra £375,000 if you win this. Pre-tax, admittedly.”

This game should make all true cricket enthusiasts feel slightly queasy, as if they think their favourite pet dog might have contracted a potentially incurable disease, but are procrastinating over taking it to the vet for fear of confirming the worst.

* Correct at time of printing. Check stock market reports for confirmation

Times Recommends

• It’s the beginning of the affair
• Afghanistan: still a price worth paying
• Heroes of the downtrodden