Middle School Legislature

I basically have no credibility in the larger world because I do stuff like the "Hygiene" post.
Now when I need to say something halfway serious, I am in no danger of actually being taken seriously.
I'm new to this politics game, though my friends have been doing it for many years, with a great deal of success I might add.
This H36 contest is my test case, about how this stuff is done.
The defining concept for me is that the people I know personally who have done well in the legislature have one thing in common. They are very, extremely, embarrassingly, intimidatingly smart. I'm not slow, but Billy Bradbury and Jules Bailey are scary smart guys, and I consider it a privilege to claim acquaintance.
The pace in Salem during the session is brutal, one thing after another, with little time for reflection or doubt. None for confusion.
An average Joe can participate and not look too bad, and there are plenty of people to tell him what to do, how to vote, what things mean what, but in order to drive a specific agenda and create legislation and guide public policy from the front you have to be very quick on your feet indeed and the average Joe so beloved of those on the one side of the aisle will be lost, a pawn  in somebody else's game.
You have to work, to read and read some more and grasp what you have read and  synthesize it immediately and project the implications and move on to the next thing before the ink is dry, so to speak. You have to shift gears instantaneously and carry your whole attention with you at all times. Not everybody can do it.
Which is why I support Sharon Meieran so fully. I know she can get out ahead of this process and actually think it and lead it and know what she is about, the whole time.
Jen Williamson is no doubt a wonderful person, and I don't care who her clients were or are. She strikes me as an honest and sincere character. That is not at issue, in my mind. I know she will do her very best and that will be pretty good, actually, better than most. She no doubt cares about the right NPR type things. I just don't think she has that polymath all-consuming genius that marks the real leadership. I'm excited about Sharon Meieran because I think I see that she does have what it takes to be a real guiding hand in public policy.
John Kitzhaber, the aging mad genius of health care reform, needs her in the house to help get this new policy grounded, to do some of the heavy lifting he has done so well for so long. And I don't even like John Kitzhaber, but I recognize that he knows far more about this public health business than anybody I have read about or heard of on the national scene let alone in our fair tiny lovable broke-ass state.
There's a lot of middle school nonsense going on in this H36 race that is beneath the dignity of either of these fine and admirable women. You may say what you like about either, but  a gentleman, or a lady, does not stoop to dispute distasteful rumour, which is what this slinging of accusation amounts to. We have a whole political party dedicated to the skewing of falsehood into the form of truthiness. Let's leave this hallway-by-the-locker nonsense to them.Vote the issues, vote the candidates, and leave the accusations to the fools.