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If you blinked, you missed it. There was a moment of silence Thursday by the presidential candidates, respectful but brief.

Otherwise, this campaign is starting to feel like a 12-hour car trip with two children in the back seat fighting. Over what? As if it matters.

Stop looking out my window! She keeps looking out my window! Look out your own window! Ow! Did you see that? He hit me! She hit me first!

Then again, on a 12-hour car trip, a driver can occasionally pull over at rest stops and make threats. And mean them, this time.

The parental equivalent of a trooper issuing a warning ticket, these accomplish nothing, other than to preserve some pretense of authority. Everyone in the car knows that we’re not going to turn around this instant and go home, because that would take six hours. Still, raising the possibility reinforces just who, by God, is in the driver’s seat.

Voters, on the other hand, have no such illusion of being in charge. We get to choose the name on the touch screen in November, but until then are hostage to bickering that grows more ginned-up by the hour.

The stew du jour — though the day is young — still seems to be Barack Obama’s quip that a John McCain presidency would be more of the same: “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink.”

The McCain camp jumped on the remark as a veiled reference to Gov. Sarah Palin and demanded an apology. (I, for one, was more offended by the fish-wrapping remark, an obvious reference to newspapers.)

And though Obama dismissed the McCain protests as “phoney outrage,” proclaiming “enough is enough,” Obama has been known to shed a crocodile tear or two, as Associated Press political writer Calvin Woodward observed the other day.

Obama, for example, continually draws righteous indignation when he tells crowds that McCain said being middle-class means making less than $5 million a year. (McCain was kidding, and said so at the time.)

The Obama camp also stated that McCain couldn’t define honor — “and we know why.” (As Woodward points out, a “cranky” McCain had in reality simply blown off the Time reporter who asked him to define honor, curtly telling him to “read my book.”)

And you know, maybe people with small children are used to being caught in the middle of these rivalries, and in the cosmic sense, have made their bed and must now lie in it.

But what about all those other voters out there? The high school senior, voting for the first time in what was advertised as a historic election. The senior citizen who survived a Depression and a war that saved democracy. The immigrant who risked it all to come to our shore, learn our language and apply for citizenship.

All that for what? To decide whether Obama called Palin a pig, or was just using a figure of speech? To sort out whether McCain couldn’t define honor, or was just being a meanie to some defenseless reporter?

If children teach us anything, it’s never to take sides in these squabbles, but stand firm.

These candidates need to go to their rooms, and not come out until they are ready to act their age. And this time, we mean it.

Turnoff is a good thing

Of course, the other option is to take part in the upcoming “Fall TV Turnoff” Sept. 21-27, a new companion to the spring turnoff, because one week a year isn’t enough.

One caveat, however: When the Center for Screen Time Awareness also wants to turn off computers and videos games, can we make an exception for car DVDs on 12-hour trips?

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com