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Truly, here in America, we have lost our way. I could see this every time I turned on the TV, but it took me a while to figure it out.

It’s simple. We’ve turned our elections into sports and our sports into elections.

For instance, there is an alarming similarity between the path to the presidency and the Chase for the Sprint Cup. The central path is that neither makes a lick of sense.

Clinton-Trump has become Red Sox-Yankees. Kaine-Pence has become, uh, IUP-Slippery Rock.

As Henny Young might have said, take NASCAR. Please.

Watch the first Clinton-Trump debate. It looks like Cale Yarborough-Bobby Allison. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine Trump saying, “I’ll tell you one *&+%@#! thing, if that crooked, lying *&+%@#! Hillary Clinton gets her *&+%@#! jet plane in front of mine between here and *&+%@#! Reagan International, I’m gonna shoot that *&+%@#! down!”

“By God, you won’t!”

“By God, I will!”

“Won’t!”

“Will!”

“Well, I called shotgun!”

“Did not!”

“Did, too!”

This is approximately the level of contemporary discourse.

Meanwhile, NASCAR has reverted to the Marquess of Queensbury rules.

The driver who finished second climbs out of his car, splashes a bit of tonic water, pops a lozenge, turns up a bottle of a popular soft drink but doesn’t actually drink any of it, has an associate do something with his hair, looks into the camera and says, “Oh, jolly good show!”

He attends the post-race media conference with everything he needs except an ascot.

I want to see that guy with grease all over his face, so that when he takes off his goggles, he looks like a raccoon. I want him to take a slug of liquor, smooch a woman who is not his wife, and say, “I’ll whip that *&+%@#!’s *&+%@#! next time.”

It’s a long way from Curtis Turner to Jamie McMurray. Turner would be great in the Chase. I’d vote for McMurray for president today, sight unseen, without a clue over whether or not he ever supported the war in Iraq.

Some NASCAR drivers act as if they flipped a coin to determine whether they’d run K&N East or enter the seminary.

At some point, NASCAR drivers gradually stopped being crazy as loons. They’re supposed to be loons. Sane people do not grow up to drive high-dollar cars at breakneck speeds around high-banked ovals for four hours. When sane people go on trips, they do not wind up at the same place they started.

Sane people used to run the country. Other sane people used to elect them. Sane people used to go crazy on weekends, watching ballgames and car races to relieve the tedium of being respectable and classy all week.

Why don’t the candidates just race? City Council gets determined at a roller rink. County Council runs the local dirt track in jalopies. State legislature runs at the drag strip, Congress hits the asphalt. All the presidential primaries are on superspeedways.

This makes little sense. Neither does what we’ve got.