Here are the real things this presidential campaign should turn on:

1. How do we resolve the education gap nationally to create comeptitive science, engineering and business people tor evitalize the economy long term, to create a new generation of important artists to restore the nation's soul, and a new generation of leaders to create vital new visions and direction?

2. How do we turn our lame and limping oil-driven economy, battered by a flattening international market, into an innovative, energy-independent, self-reliant, fiscally sound economy?

3. How do we ensure the fundamental safety of the nation to ensure these things can happen?

4. How do we regenerate an infrastructure to accomodate the new order of magnitude of population of the country, including water, road, waste, and environmental services?

5. How do we manage our relations with neighbors, allies, and other nations do allow thiese thigns to happen with minimum disruption and maximum international benefit?

Note that these are the issues Obama talks about over and over, and the issues that ther media repeatedly avoids, and that the Republicans mock. Note that none of them involves sex, abortion, or a fixation on body parts, and none of them are predicated on hatred, revenge, or unkind attitudes toward others; they arepredicated instead on what is effective across the spectrum of national concerns.

The core of this crucial election is NOT lipstick or rhetoric.


A