God As Cave Painter vs The Sorceror's Apprentice

ABC claims that the image campaign for Palin is already lost given the recent US cover. As always, ABC claims we bitter typical small town types can't make up our own minds until we see what's on aisle eleven next to the mashed potatoes.

If anything, the Palin selection demonstrated that relying on emotional vectoring to steer the election is unreliable. Notice that in one day all of the effort to build up Obama leading to the Big Spectacle was undone and the poles switched to the other side. So I wouldn't count on that cover to change the outcomes. Expect a lot more of that kind of thing though.

Obama is insulated because... well.. umm... because he is.... ummm...a .... lawyer.

But the press only runs with what sells. Someone may find out that Obama's daughters sell their lunch for lipstick or something equally depraved.

The experience drum is loose at the rims. If there are two issues that will cause people to think, they will be:

1. EXTREME conservatism. It scares people when you tell them their children will be taught nonsense science and be unable to compete for a job with an Indian who was taught combinatorics at age ten while you were allowing your children to be told that considering all sides of a question means seriously considering the world was created 5000 years ago.

2. Leadership: at the end of every election cycle we are left with endorphin-addicts who fed on the hate generated by sites like Daily KOS. They have to do something with that energy so the question is can the winner actually redirect that destructive force to positive means or is he merely the Sorceror's Apprentice? See the history of the Sea Peoples in the Mediterranean. Now find a HUD map of the foreclosures in Detroit near the lake. These people will be on the move soon. Ask the Los Angeles police about the connections of uncontrolled immigration and organized crimes in the Bel Air area. Desperate people organize desperately.

Goals vs leadership. Bill Clinton had it exactly right. Are we in trouble? Yes we are. How shall we choose? I don't think that cover sells me against Palin, and that speech in Denver didn't sell me on Obama.

On to the debates. Maybe there will be an essential clue. It seems to be coming down to who can best lead and what are their achievable sustainable goals.