No running; running for President

The broken toe still hurts and worse, the rest of my foot is not right--running twice over the last week probably didn't help because I'm sure I was compensating for the broken toe, thereby causing me to run with an unnatural gait. So long story short, it looks like no half marathon for me. For someone who still hates running and who was dreading the race, you would think this was a gift, but weirdly, I'm disappointed. It's partly because I did actually train most of the summer, so now all those painful runs seem for naught. I'm sure it's also because of my competitive nature. Anyway, even if the toe/foot felt miraculously better by next week, I have not run any significant distance since early August, so I would be woefully unprepared.

Reading all the armchair quarterbacks coverage of the Palin speech has been interesting. Predictably, both liberals and conservatives huffed and puffed and either got pissed off or gloated, but nobody really seemed to be the voice of reason. So here I am. For all the critics out there who criticized her lack of policy specifics: guess what, this wasn't the forum for it. She was preaching to the choir here and only needed to do exactly what she did: be charismatic and engaging and get the crowd riled up about their opponent. And for everyone who gloated about her hitting it out of the ballpark, it's really not that impressive when you consider the stadium was the equivalent of the pee-wee leagues and she hit it off a tee. I'll be more critical when I see her talk specifics in a debate with Biden. One of the things that pissed me off the most was all the mocking of Obama's work as a community organizer. The idea of individuals getting involved with bettering their communities is, I thought, fundamental to the Republican Party platform--they should be praising him for this activism, which shows local, individual works over big government involvement in action.

The New York Times had an interesting piece on McCain today. In a nutshell, he's a man torn between a genuine desire to serve a higher cause and a selfish desire to succeed. In a way, I think the same could be said of Obama. With either of them, and maybe a bit more so with Obama, I feel like we're on the precipice of something really exciting and different, but that glass half full becomes a glass half empty when I start thinking about whether either candidate can really change business and politics as usual. With McCain, he has historically shown that he is willing to make enemies within his own party and risk his own personal success in the meantime. Obama hasn't been around long enough to show the same, but the way he inspires people is, well, inspiring. Obamaniacs can be a bit annoying though. They're usually the ones crying foul about making the election a personality contest when in reality, they're all about the cult of personality. Policy is what it's all about? Really? Do the Obamaniacs who relentlessly bashed Hilary really believe that their dislike of Hilary was based on her policies? How different were her policies and positions from Obama's? As far as I can tell, not very. They didn't like Hilary because they didn't like Hilary, plain and simple, and to claim otherwise and to talk about policy over personality is pure bullshit. It also ignores the reality that for a large number of people, they do vote on personality. It's the only way to explain how W got elected not just once, but twice, and to ignore that reality can prove fatal to the Democrats this fall.