Matthew Dowd, who led President Bush's campaign for reelection in 2004, recently told the New York Times that "The only things that are going to change the equation of the election are the four debates." This is due to the plethora of partisan and biased media sources that the public is confronted with every day. As Dowd pointed out, "The average person has 90 channels. They get all the dot-coms. They all get a newspaper. There is so much flow of information that they just begin to discount it all."

And for that, we can breathe a sigh of relief, although I fear that Dowd might give the average person too much credit in saying the media will be depreciated. But if the most influential factor in this election will be the candidates' own voices - through debates and interviews - then I hope the moderators and interviewers will break with the improprieties of the past several months and truly give both sides an even playing field.

Since listening to Governor Sarah Palin's and Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Wednesday night speeches, I have been thinking a lot about heroes and community organizers.

Giuliani -- for those of you who missed it -- referred to McCain as a "hero" and to Obama as "Nada".  Very nice, Rudy...just the kind of insightful statements that will help move this country forward.

Palin said, "Our nominee for President is a true profile in courage, and people like that ARE HARD TO COME BY."  Really Governor Palin? I grew up on military bases and I was surrounded by heroes, true "profiles in courage".  They just didn't talk about it all the time. (It's what warriors do, and are still doing from the youngest enlisted man or woman to the highest-ranking officer.)  Like McCain's father, my father was also an Admiral, a fact I have never found reason to mention publicly until now.  Why?  Because though I was very proud of my father, it was his accomplishment, not mine. Unlike John McCain, it is not on MY resume. And my paternal grandmother was a suffragette...you know...one of those (snicker snicker) community organizers about whom you and Rudy Giuliani are so condescending.

A funny thing happened on the way to the polling booth in San Diego County. People got lost. I don’t mean they couldn’t find their polling place, although that happened a lot, too. They couldn’t find their political party.

Sure, most everyone had registered to vote under the patriotic flag of their choice, but many I talked to were feeling disenfranchised by their party and wondering where they really belonged.

People are describing themselves as a mixture of parties these days, saying something like “I’m fiscally conservative, but socially liberal.” So does that describe an elephant or a donkey or some new creature?  What do you get when you mix blue states and red states? You get purple. It seems a new purple voter is emerging. A lot of people I talked with on election day expressed frustration with their party and wanted to know how to change their official voter registration card. America is clamoring for change and voters are beginning with whom they want to align themselves.

Some Republicans, for example, claim that John McCain is really a Democrat in disguise. Has the party left the voters or is it the other way around?