While there really isn't much to discuss about the Presidential Forum tonight on service, there were a few things that did stick out to me, especially as I watched the Fox News coverage of it.  No one in the Fox News panel could find much difference between what the candidates were saying, but I thought there was a very clear difference.  John McCain made the point that while there is some room for government becoming a place for volunteer, he consistently made the point that government is not always the best place to go for charity work, and that faith based programs and programs set up in the private sector were much more effective.  But, for Barack Obama, his answer was consistently government, government, and more government.  In fact, he said it so much that he finally said, "I want to make government cool again."  If there were any two words in the English lexicon that should never be used together it should be 'government' and 'cool'.  Government isn't supposed to be cool.  It's supposed to stay out of its citizens way as much as possible, and it's supposed to protect them from harm.  But, please, don't try to make government cool.

As a stay-at-home-mom, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the attacks wielded against Sarah Palin for her parenting. I am someone who used to be extremely judgmental toward working moms, until I heard Dr. Robin Smith (Oprah's resident psychologist) make a statement that really affected me. What she essentially said was this: On the one hand, you can have a stay-at-home mom who is completely checked out, and, on the other hand, you can have a working mother who, when she is home, is very present. And, not just physically present, but mentally and emotionally, as well. For example, she made the point that when a working mother goes to her child's soccer game to leave the Blackberry and laptop in the car and to not spend the time at the soccer game on her cell phone. The point is that it doesn't matter what kind of mother you are when your not around, what matters is what kind of mother you are when you are around.

This idea was also echoed by Dr. Stephen Poulter, a clinical psychologist, who was interviewed on the Dennis Prager Show on July 29, 2008.  Dr. Poulter did talk about proximity, but he also made the point that it's not everything.  The point he was making was specifically in reference to fathers, but he implied that the same would also go for mothers.  He said that it doesn't matter if a father is 20 miles away (in the case of divorce), what matters is the emotional connection and bond that he has with his child.  There are also other factors he refers to such as the emotional stability of each parent.

I have thought a lot about both comments while watching Sarah Palin.  She not only strikes me as extremely emotionally stable, but she also strikes me as someone who is "present" when with her kids and has tried to cultivate an emotional connection with her kids.  One way you can tell this is by looking at her kids who all come across as very secure.  I also think it's safe to assume that most people would not have more than one or two kids if they didn't enjoy having and being with their children (this is purely based on personal anecdotal evidence, but I would be surprised if it were not true based on what I know about human nature--we tend not to repeatedly do things to or for ourselves that do not bring us pleasure).

I found the Dr. Poulter discussion so interesting I actually purchased his book The Mother Factor, and I plan to post some relevant passages from it over the next several days.

(One small caveat: in case you were concerned, I am not someone who frequents The Oprah Winfrey show, but when I saw the subject I was very curious about the conclusions they were drawing.  The specific episode I watched presented mothers on both sides of the fence and I thought it was very balanced.)

Palin Strikes Back

From the Sun - Uk by Fergus Shanahan

I'm still trying to figure out Townhall.com's blogging software, which explains why everything looks so weird.

In addition to the great speech by Sarah Palin, I have to commend Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Rudy Giuliani for taking the gloves off tonight.  It is clear we have a fight ahead of us, but Barack Obama is definitely not the clear winner he once was.