I'm not in politics.

When I first started working in politics as a junior aide on Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign it never occurred to me that I would one day work in the White House. There were plenty of women among the volunteers who stuffed envelopes and walked precincts. But there were fewer and fewer on each successive level of influence and access.

It isn't fate but fecklessness that has shoved Sarah Palin to the sidelines of national politics. The real tragedy is that she's taken a lot of other serious Republican women with her.

As women have played an increasingly important role in politics there is no question that they've brought a different perspective focusing attention on a broader set of issues and building alliances with other women.

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent scurrilous wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests. The right reason is to challenge the status quo to serve the common good and to leave this nation better than we found it.

These days politics religion media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.

In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.

Politics is the conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized.

When times are tough constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world cooperation works better. After all nobody's right all the time and a broken clock is right twice a day.