Appearience -- No its not another typo!

One of the "joys" of being a substitute teacher in a New York City Public High School is that you learn interesting things from your students --sometimes by accident.One afternoon I turned around to face the blackboard (not always a safe thing to d0: once a bottle of soda --plastic, but half filled--came whizzing by my ear) and I saw a word that was seemed familiar. I couldn't afford to devote that moment to closer inspection, but I made a mental note, then returned my attention to the sometimes good, sometimes wild students. After the bell rang and the students left to torment real teachers in their next class (no, they are not so bad...all the time) I looked at the word again. "a-p-p-e-a-r-i-e-n-c-e" "appearience". Did the student mean to write "appearance" or "experience" I don't know, but the result is one of those great moments in literature: the birth of a neologism. A new word! Invented by one of my students! (well, a colleague's student--I'm just a sub).

Appearience. What is that? I'm glad you asked. After what seemed to be YEARS of campaigning by an endless list of people nobody ever heard of, we are down to three candidates. All three are senators. Until recently I believed this was a problem, that only governors should run for president. I believed that experience actually governing large polticial entities was an essential qualification for president. but I live in the New York Metropolitan Area --the tri-state area. I dare say that few people in this neck of the woods: Connecticutt, New Jersey and New York are still impressed with any man or woman who serves as a governor. Yes this is the era of GOVERNORS GONE WILD.

Appearience is the "appearance" of having "experience".

Barack Obama, who had his share of problems last week (see todays's Obama post) is innocent, never having claimed to be the most experienced presidential candidate. He claims other qualifications that we won't go into here.

John McCain, on the other hand, claims that he has the necessary experience to lead us out of the mess created by another former governor who REALLY killed my belief that Governors are the people best prepared to be president: can you say "Dubya?" McCain, at least among republicans, has gotten away with this --probably because they know best what a mistake it was to credit George Dubya Bush's tenure as Governor of Texas. Even though a legislator's job is vital and few people have what it takes to be a great legislator, it does not give you governing experience. House and Senate staffs are pretty small. But he did seem to have expertise in national security and foreign affairs. This week we learned that he only had foreign policy appearience. Senator Lieberman-- who had to whisper in Mccain's ear the right words about Iran and Iraq and Shiites and Sunni's--he has foregin policy exprience, but he's not running for President.

Which brings us to Hillary. She came close to pulling off the most breathtaking "appearience" coup. She came pretty close to persuading lost of people that by virtue of standing next to her husband, President Bill Clinton, SHE had genuine experience of the kind vital to a successful presidency. Then they opened up her calendars and schedules and we saw that her days were filled with teas and photo opps and all of a sudden she looked more like Barbara and Nancy and Laura (quoth Dubya) "the love of my life", than George H.W. or Ronnie or Bill. And now there is a debate over whether she played some kind of important role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland but geez, if you stand in one place long enough you will have at least one chance to do something good.

And there you have it folks: McCain and Clinton: lots of appearience.