The presidential and vice-presidential nominees for the two parties were off and running once the conventions were over. The vice-presidential nominees were considered surprise choices by many political observers, with the biggest surprise clearly being the GOP nominee. Senator McCain’s real choice – Senator Joe Lieberman – couldn’t get past the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, so the McCain campaign had to go to a “Plan B” without doing much of a background check on this selection. That resulted in Governor Sarah Palin coming onto the national scene with a bang – no pun intended. Now, it will be quite interesting to see what real effect Senator Joe Biden and Governor Palin wind up having on the final outcome on November 4th.

There was a sudden stop in most all political activities because of Hurricane Ike and the anniversary of 9-11. While those activities pretty much brought things to a halt politically for a short time, all of the candidates hit the road again with a flurry on September 12th. Since then they have been hitting the campaign trail at a steady pace. But then the economic woes facing our nation took the spotlight, shocking the American people and the world. The nation’s economy is clearly the number one issue on the minds of Americans. Whichever candidate deals with that issue effectively will be the next President. So far, it appears that person will be Senator Obama. His opponent, Senator McCain, appeared to be like a deer in headlights since the economic problems facing our nation were put in sharp focus, dominating the news on every media outlet. McCain’s flip-flops on concepts such as governmental regulation will become more and more evident between now and Election Day. To put it in simple terms, the weeks starting on September 14th weren’t good ones for the “Palin-McCain ticket.”