Politicking as Warfare

The question is, why are politicians
so eager to be president?
What is it about the job
that makes it worth revealing, on national television,
that you have the ethical standards
of a slime-coated piece of industrial waste?
--Dave Barry

A politician needs the ability to foretell
what is going to happen tomorrow, next week,
next month, and next year.
And have the ability afterwards to explain
why it didn't happen
--Winston Churchill

Political language . . . is designed to make
lies sound truthful and murder respectable,
and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind
--George Orwell
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Just a little tidbit on the impreciseness of our press, from the New York Times online. My comments concern only the front page lede:

TOP NEWS

Gingrich and Romney Trade Jabs as G.O.P. Race Rolls On

By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG

The intensifying duel between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich was shaping up as a proxy battle in the fight between their party's establishment wing and a grass-roots insurgency.

How can a race be a "duel", "proxy battle", "fight" or an "insurgency"? Could they have stuffed more battle words into that simple sentence if they had tried?

Can you even picture Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich executing an actual duel? Can we correctly characterize ANY politician as performing battle? Since it would be a metaphorical one, wouldn't they have to possess an ideological conviction? Aren't these men -- most politicians -- actually more correctly analogized to actors?

As such, would not terms like "dancing", "posturing", "capering", "strutting" and the like would be more well-suited?

Must every human endeavor be militarized? Is that now the gold standard for meaningful action?

If so, what does that say about our society?