Perception is 90% . . .

Have you heard after the big meeting about Iraq? We have a new plan. President Bush isn't going to use the phrase "staying the course," any more. The worst month for American deaths, this year in Iraq and this is what came out of the special meetings? No more "stay the course!" President Bush really should not be blamed for that phrase, anyway, and as tiring as it has become in the past 3 1/2 years, the phrase is actually from the Reagan administration, so it's been heard for 25 years. No wonder we're tired of it. I was reading about how much scripting and choregraphy was done by the White House staff in the Reagan administration. Mr. Reagan really seemed to be more or less treated as a figure head. Of course, we'll never know when the horrible disease of Alzheimer's began wreaking havok in his life, but apparently "stay the course" was a good safe statement to make without going into details and strategy. Or, maybe it's been a good safe statement to make when there is no strategy.

Life is certainly getting interesting as another election approaches that is already fraught with "what ifs" and possible voting recalculations. I can still remember a time when we knew who our elected officials were, right after the election. With all this technology and effeciency, it may take months to know the outcome, but we can always know ahead of time, by the polls, where the potential malfunctions will be . . . Rather than discussing the candidates and who will win or who has the best campaign or plan, it's more now a matter of discussing which strategic precinct will have problems. It would seem, the democracy we are demanding of the Middle East isn't going much smoother there. Abbas has decided democracy or at least free elections just may be a destabilizing factor for Palestine. So what happens when free elections don't work? Perhaps an electoral college would be the next step . . . I remember the promotional propaganda regarding the electoral college in recent years, then as I listened to the news regarding Tom DeLay and all this redistricting, it simply made so much sense. Redistricting didn't just make life a little easier to get the party of choice into Congress, redistricting has the power to change a state from blue to red at the level of the electoral college.

Let all things be done decently and in order.