Random Observations from an Absentee Amateur Pundit

My last post was dated August 21. Slightly more than two weeks ago. I’m amused (and somewhat dazed) at how much things have changed since then. Sean Quinn phrased it well, last night, at FiveThirtyEight:

For all the drama it generated back in March, Jeremiah Wright feels like so long ago that it might as well have happened in the 1988 election. Even the text message VP announcement story of two weeks ago seems ancient. Both conventions will seem antiquated by the first debate …

As I explained to Joe G. and several of my TMV colleagues, the demands of my paying job have, of late, severely interfered with my blogging hobby, forcing me unwillingly into the role of bystander during the hoopla of the VP picks and conventions. And those demands won’t subside for at least another week. But I’m sneaking in this post, regardless, a collection of three random observations from the days I’ve been relegated to the sidelines of pedestrian punditry.

Observation #1: Sarah Palin has more going for her, politically, than many of us would like to admit. But I can’t accept her as a VP, regardless, because she represents the hard-right, religious blinders-on, platitudes-embraced mentality I abandoned many years ago. It doesn’t belong in our politics. Period.

Observation #2: No matter how much we might kid ourselves or want to believe otherwise, this election is most certainly politics as usual — on both sides of the aisle.

Observation #3: Contra observation #2, I must give McCain props for silencing the GOP convention crowd by acknowledging in unequivocal terms the failures of six years of Republican rule. I must likewise give Obama props for reminding the press, when asked about Palin’s out-of-wedlock-pregnant daughter, that families are off-limits, especially children, adding a second reminder that his mother was 18 when he was born. Even my hard-right brother-in-law respected that comment.