Obama to be tried and tested the McCain way?

There's a well-known firm in Britain called McCain. They make "oven chips" which are potatoes neatly chipped, then frozen so the customer can put them in the oven to get something ressembling a deep fried potato chip that is the mainstay of fish and chips. How good this process is and how fine the results are has been the stuff of food scientists. They have tried to replicate the fat fryers in the domestic ovens.

Senator Obama is being seen by the Republican Party as an untried and untested potato head. They are gearing up to put him through the slicers and the ovens of the presidential campaign by seeing how he reacts to their barbs and broadsides. What a carry on? If this is to be the level of the debate, then Heaven help us all! We are being subjected to talk about shoe selection (Imelda Marcos style?), about personal tastes, and music appreciation. Does McCain always buy $500 shoes? It is all too banaal. We need a proper debate about dealing with the credit crunch fraudsters, the Iraq debacle, the world energy problems and the emerging economies of China, India and Brazil. If the established "Western World" goes to hell in a hand cart, what will the importance of a presidential candidate's shoes be?

Both parties need to get away from juvenile schoolyard propaganda and address the real issues. If being tried and tested is showing you have 50 years of experience, then it hasn't been a very good example in most cases. Barack Obama will fail or succeed only by his abilities to deal with "events". And no president deals with this in isolation. He has a team around him.

Being president is not like being Cinderella. Your shoes are not a pivotal part of the plotlines!