Sorry to jump in on this friendly little chat ... but a couple of comments are deserving of a slightly different perspective ...

McCain needs to "take things a little slower". I have spent the better part of the last two years with my aging father (whose health is declining rapidly) and lots of other senior senior citizens (and I place John McCain close to that category). When I watch McCain closely, and listen carefully to how he constructs responses to questions (or even attempts to share a prepared comment), I see lots of signs of lapses and disconnects in his thought processes. This does not translate to lapses in judgment (I think he has enough of those, as it is), but is a precursor to same. The man is getting old, and with age comes potential impairment.

As to experience, there are many kinds of experience. Just because you have had experiences does not make you automatically better suited to be a leader. Dick Cheney is about as "experienced" as you can get ... he's held several high offices in multiple administrations, dealt with powerful and important people from around the world in multiple contexts, lead and/or directed major corporations. He is, as you say, well "connected". Has that extensive "experience", or those valuable "connections", worked to our advantage over the last 7.5 years?

I watched the oil CEOs testify yesterday on CSPAN. My god, talk about "experience". And yet they sat there and lied their little fannies off, staring directly into the cameras and sharing their experiences and their connections and their view of the world ... all of which is shaped by the distant positions of power that the occupy, the world in which they work every day, and the shared values of the all the people to whom they are "connected". This includes Dick Cheney. Remember, when this administration first formulated its Top Secret energy plan, it was oil executive Cheney who met 1 time with environmental groups and 46 times with fellow oil guys (as far as we know, since he still refuses to release the names and dates and times he spent with various people) to develop a policy, directly connected to the upcoming invasion of Iraq, that secured American dependence on foreign sources of oil for another generation. And so these five guys, in their expensive suits and total disconnect with the average American citizen, sat up there and had the gall to say that it is America's oil companies that hold the key to "fixing" our energy problems.

Oil is not the solution to our dependence on oil. I don't care if we quadruple refining capacity, strip mine the entire north shore of Alaska to a depth of 10,000 feet, and fill up the entire Caribbean with wall to wall drilling platforms ... the petroleum reserves are finite and our focus must now be on finding some other source of energy to drive our machines. And yet, it is precisely these men's experiences that limit their vision, preclude other solutions, and to think outside the box.

Personally, I think there are two fundamental problems in our country (well, at least in regards to this discussion ... there are many other important fundamental problems, to be sure) that are related to "experience". The first is that an awful lot of Americans have abrogated their responsibilities as citizens ... they don't vote, they don't pay attention to the issues, they do not educate themselves and stay informed about what is going on, they do not participate, and they allow someone else to do all the work of governance for them. "That's just the government, and it's not my business" they seem to say. Incidentally, this broad brush stereotype does not apply to anyone on this list, because to go out of your way to express your opinion -- however well thought out it is -- is a participatory act. That said ... we have grown lazy, and we have failed in our number one duty as citizens to monitor (at least) and participate in our governance. This, in turn, has allowed a professional class of politicians to step in and take care of stuff "for us". How nice of them. Many are well-motivated (on both sides of the aisle). But the majority are not. They are for sale. They can be for sale because we are not watching.

And, besides being for sale, they are all "well-connected". The network is frighteningly intricate. A "good" Congressman ... whether he or she serves for just two years or serves for forty ... is guaranteed a job with one of the groups/companies/industries/lobbyists/think tanks upon retirement and then might move back into government as an appointed aid or director of an agency. There is a revolving door of "well-connected" people up there whose exclusive club is blinded to the plight of common people. In some situations, such a network works well ... it gets business done quickly and efficiently, and the business it does is for the benefit of all. That is not the case at the moment, as far as I am concerned. Our government is broken.

One of the primary attractions of Barack Obama is that he is not connected. The good old boys will try to exclude him from their inner circle ... and they might succeed. Then again, they may not. "Outsiders", "new comers" ... visionaries, if you will ... sometimes have a way of stepping around good old boy networks and leaving them in the dust. I'm willing to take a chance, because the current network has stopped fulfilling its purpose, and is not serving us well.