It's time for Obama to refocus

So there you are riding a sweet line, single track swooping through the beautiful woods of Minneapolis' Theodore Wirth Park. Knobbies caressing mother natures' gentle curves rolling out before you. It's easy to forget your worries and just keep rolling. 

MORC does a fantastic job (MOCA partners on this one too) of laying out single track that tickles the landscape, draws out the smoothest path. 

Then you suddenly get jerked back to reality with a challenge that requires your full attention.

The first time you see such an obstacle your eyes are drawn to the potential failure points. You can't take your eyes off the terrain that will dine on your tender flesh and leave you with the fleeting vision of your knees passing over your no longer moving handlebars.

Turns out that  your full attention isn't enough. You need to know where to focus your full attention. It's not on the logs laying across what had been such a sweet, smooth path only a curve ago. No, your eyes need to stay on the smooth track that will carry you over the disruption.

You may even enjoy pausing on the other side to see how true the line really was on the approach. Now that you are over it you may notice that the downslope that you couldn't see (so you weren't worried about it) was the most dramatic part and you simply leaned back and rode it down.

So what does this all have to do with Obama? Well it had been a pretty smooth ride up until the announcement that Palin had joined the competition. Just like the log pile dressed with planks, this was a big disruption to the Obama candidacy and suddenly the excitement was all about this new feature on the trail to the White House.

When we step back and take a look at this disruption, we see why McCain selected the beauty queen; she is just a younger, more attractive George Bush! Just a simple country bumpkin but better than Bush since she has oratory skill and a cuter smirk. So the Republican platform is that the leadership doesn't actually have to have a clue, (he can't figure out email and she hasn't thought about Iraq...) they just have to come across like someone you'd run into at the grocery store. With this comfort level established they figure, and lots of conservatives are swallowing hook, line and sinker, you will put them in office. Who wouldn't want their buddy in the White House? 

So it's time we divert our eyes from the beauty queen and focus on that clear line that will carry us over this diversion.