Pretty Petunias

The Petunias (Petunia hybrida) are doing a great job of providing color to the front edge of the LipsYard Garden.

Charmaine has planted three colors this year; Purple

Pink
and White. A lot of the other flowers have bloomed and died already, but not the hearty Petunia.

Like the Petunia, providing cover and color in a garden that has a lot of past-blooming plants, the Sarah Palin VP selection by John McCain selection has served to take the spotlight off the Obama campaign-for now.

But here’s the thing. Obama ended the Democratic Convention on a high. He got a nice “convention bounce” from it.

The Republican’s main campaign tactic has been to attack Obama. The negative campaigning has been overshadowed by Palin and now, Gustav. That’s a plus for Obama.

Meanwhile, the “novelty” of a woman candidate is minmal. She’s no Hillary Clinton, and didn't we chose Geraldine Ferraro for Democratic VP over 20 years ago?

The media is not going to fawn over Palin because she’s a woman. Indeed, just the opposite may happen. As a new face on the national scene, the media will go full bore to see who and what she is as a person and a politician. Every gaffe and stumble will be magnified under the glare of the media spotlight, and it appears that she has plenty to feed the media monster's appetite for quite some time.

Republican's are going to need to devote a lot of resources to defend her image and McCain for choosing her. That's money that could have been spent on Obama attack ads.

All we need to do is play "nice," sit back, and enjoy the show.