The Political Mind of a 7 Year Old

I must confess that I have become practically obsessed with the Presidential election this year, most evenings slipping upstairs at 8pm to watch Keith Olbermann on MSNBC before putting the kids to bed or staring endlessly at Real Clear Politics polling data.

Max has taken to watching Countdown with me and he too has gotten very interested in understanding what all is going on, especially after our recent trip to DC. The other day, he came in from playing outside and told me that he and his friend Jake saw the McCain-Palin signs in the yard across the street and that he told his playmate that "McCain has been telling lies".

It's been really exciting around here with North Carolina actually being in play this election, for the first time since Carter won the state in 1976. The down side is that we are completely deluged with telephone calls all evening long and political advertisements on our local television stations around the clock at the moment.

While we were sitting around watching TV today, the McCain "Surgeon" TV ad came on. The basic premise of this ad is to attack Obama's "inexperience" and it's tag line is "OBAMA: Never been in charge of anything".

I hate ads like this because while they may bring up the point that Obama has never held an executive position in government, they completely gloss over the fact that neither has John McCain. I guess he might claim that his brief stint as a commanding officer of a small training squadron for less than a year over 30 years ago might qualify as "being in charge of something", but that is certainly not what the ad is trying to imply.

Irritated by the complete lack of full disclosure in not only this, but just about every other political ad I've seen in the last month (e.g., Elizabeth Dole's despicable Godless Americans ad), I shouted at the TV --> "SO WHAT EXACTLY HAS JOHN McCAIN EVER BEEN IN CHARGE OF?!?!?!"

Max, without missing a beat, responded: "Having the most houses!"

:)