“Has a candidate's embarrassing lack of knowledge surrounding basic facts about the world challenged us to better educate ourselves?"

YES! But I have to say that as soon as this election is over I’m going to limit myself to one hour per day of watching/reading news. I don’t need any more than that to keep me informed. Too much news breeds angst. There’s got to be a happy medium between the ostrich with its head in the sand and the Chicken Little with her eyes fixed on a sky that (probably) isn’t falling.