John McCain's decision to select Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate has sparked new debate as to whether qualifications really matter in Presidential politics. It is the same old debate, substance versus celebrity, and the latter seems to be winning. The Palin nomination also shows that many people do not really care about a candidates stand on the issues, they are worried about whether they smoked a joint and inhaled it or if they wear lapel pins with a flag. By the end of this presidential election, we will probably know all of the candidate's golf handicaps better than their solution to high gas prices.

After watching both conventions and the major speeches, I am still not sure how they will solve our nation's problems but I do know that Palin has a pregnant 17-year-old daughter named Bristol and four other children with names that sound like ski trails. I also know that Obama's father was from Kenya and he fathered a variety of kids with a variety of women. The media have dissected Biden and McCain for so many years that there was not anything new and exciting about their lives, in fact both of their lives are so depressing that I can't for the life of me figure out why they went into politics.

Those of you who watched any of the Republican National Convention last week probably noticed the beautiful images projected on the screen behind the speakers. There were lots of flags and picturesque landscapes carefully chosen to accentuate the speeches but one of the images turned out to be that of Walter Reed Middle School instead of Walter Reed Medical Center. The wrong image appeared behind John McCain when he was giving his acceptance speech. I am not sure why McCain would want either image behind him, a middle school reminds the nation of the failure of No Child Left Behind and the hospital reminds us that we have been in Iraq for a long time and still do not know when we are going to get out.

Obama chose to give his speech at a football stadium from an elaborate set that was a cross between a Roman coliseum and a Rolling Stones concert, so much for trying to get away from the rock star image. The only thing missing was the pyrotechnics and some dry ice smoke. I am surprised that Obama was not supposed to fly into the stadium suspended high above the crowd by a wire or appear from underneath the stage in a puff of smoke, after all the team that designed Obama's stage also designed Britney Spear's concert stage.

Now that the conventions are over, we can expect some startling October revelation about at least one of the candidates. We can also expect to see slick television commercials claiming that the Democrats want to build special housing complexes for terrorists and that Republicans are building concentration camps for political opponents. Then we get to watch the Presidential debates, as if we didn't get enough of them during the primaries. If we are lucky then one of the candidates will fire off a memorable one-liner that will be repeated so many times that it will make us want to vomit.