Much as I’d like to, much as we deserve it, I don’t expect to be voting for a presidential candidate that’s a science geek any time soon. Politics and science just don’t mesh well. Politics is frequently the art of public lying. Science is frequently the practice of revealing truth to the public. That’s why politicians, like the lyin’ Bush administration, are frequently allergic to even the lamest of fact-finding efforts, like the 9/11 commission. Suffice it to say that science is not a politician’s favorite past time.

But to know nearly nothing about science is shocking.

“I do believe in basic science. I believe in participating in space. I believe in analysis of new sources of energy. I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with — with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that. We somehow can’t figure out how to duplicate it.”

Mitt believes in basic science. Thanks, pal. It really needed your faith. He remembers Cold Fusion being “solved” by the University of Utah. But the two scientists who said they had evidence of perhaps the greatest discovery in scientific history haven’t lived in the United States for 20 years. One’s dead, both were disgraced. The term “Cold Fusion” is now synonymous with reckless crackpot science. If it had been real, the breakthrough would have potentially solved the world’s energy problems. Have you been running your Lear jets on deuterium, Mittens? Do you have any idea? Or care?