Kissing babies, shaking hands, making bland statements about pride in America and do-gooders on the campaign trail — these are the hallmarks of politicians across the country.

Every moment is so precisely scheduled, so carefully worded, that even now, we don’t really know much about the candidates, beyond that Kerry is stoic, Edwards is nice, Sharpton is black, Clark has a military background, Kucinich is for peace and Dean is, well, crazy.

Maybe it’s true.

Maybe those are the only descriptors adequate for the current presidential candidates.

Maybe Dean popped some pills before his caucus-night speech in Des Moines and decided, in a jittery, crazed haze, that the best thing for the country is a passionate, driven politician who wants to thank his young supporters and promise better days ahead.

He must have been out of his mind.

Or maybe he, like the other presidential candidates, was just the unfortunate target of a media system that adores sound bites and cute little tags like “I have a scream.”

Cable and broadcast news networks aired Dean’s Iowa speech (or at least the “scream” part of it) 633 times in the four days following the speech. And that doesn’t include local news or talk shows, according to an Associated Press article.

“It took on such a life,” said Paul Slavin, senior vice president of ABC News in the AP article, that “the amount of attention it was receiving necessitated more attention.”

So the media reporting on the media reporting on a non-event. Hooray. CBS News president Andrew Heyward said the cumulative effect of the coverage was editorially justified — saying that it’s just inherent in the structure of the news media, that cable thrives on repetition, and a powerful piece of video will be repeated often.

Too bad we don’t have any powerful video of people dying of AIDS, of people losing jobs, of volunteers helping out in the community.

Or perhaps of the presidential candidates in their regular, unscripted moments — researching policy, hobnobbing with wealthy donors, arguing on the House or Senate floor.

Not just 15-second sound bites, either, but substantive reports and analysis.

But especially now, after the Dean debacle, the candidates will probably edit their speeches even more, only allowing carefully worded statements that don’t show their full knowledge, personality and qualification for the job they seek.