Snake-Eye Observations

1. How I feel about what I write (its importance or how much it took out of me to write or the passion I felt) and how the writing itself then lives or not after its birth seem to have no real relationship with each other. Frequently some throw-away comment turns out to be important and equally frequently something I've slaved over for days drops like a stone into a sullen pond. It's very weird and of no interest to anyone but another blogger, probably. Still, I probably should have written about the importance of female role-models in more explicit terms than I did in that polling post below.

2. The American system of political campaigns hones and sharpens the candidates, true, but only into being good campaigners. That has nothing to do with how well they later govern as we have learned during the last eight years. And so much of that system is truly laughable: Consider the comment I recently heard that Palin will do fine in the debates because expectations about her are low. So if one student in a college class is expected to fail but manages to pull C-level work in a test and another student is expected to get an A and does that, we are now to decide that the student with the C is the best in the class?

3. If it indeed is true that people don't vote on the basis of issues but on the basis of how they'd like a candidate in bed or by the bar counter or at the barbeque, well, I'm afraid that democracy then doesn't have quite the advantages it has been assumed to have. Or rather, we should select a double set of presidents, one for the looks and feel-good stuff and another for the actual work. The latter person could even be smart!