For many, this past week was likely just like any other during the 2008 campaign, full of useless political stories, media bias, lack of attention to actual news events in our country and around the world, campaigns pandering, and horse race stories backed up by misleading polls.  Yet, beneath all of this, I have found a number of personal lessons that I believe will help me in better understanding politics, discussing this election and becoming a more informed voter.  Often, it's hard to step outside of the day to day back and forth of this campaign and reflect on one's over all feelings about politics, the media, politicians and our fellow voters.  Yet, in order to craft a successful campaign, this is a necessary perspective.  

Below, I run through a number of lessons I've learned this week.

Lesson One: My view of a political speech or position is too often blurred by my personal feelings towards a particular candidate.  

Watching Hillary Clinton give her speech in Unity on Friday I found my views of her and even of her campaign completely transformed.  I've read many comments and posts from people who had similar reactions.  Now that she is no longer a threat to my candidate, she seems like a great political role model in many ways, with strong positions on issues I care about, and an engaging political demeanor.  Now, I'm not saying she didn't do things that were unacceptable and reprehensible during her campaign, but I have a better understanding of what led her in that direction, a genuine desire to win because she believes(believed) she would be the most effective president.  I found that I hate this winning at all cost mentality...unless it's my candidate, when, of course, it's OK, because we need to win.  This is something I must be aware of and try to keep in check.  

In the same vein, I've long believed that energy policy should be the top issue in this country's political debate.  Yet, when John McCain -- the candidate I will do virtually anything to stop -- started agreeing with some of my views on energy, I found myself hating him for it, rather than celebrating the fact that some of my views are now accepted wisdom by both candidates.  Yes, he's "flip flopped," or changed positions, on some of these issues.  But what's wrong with that?  If he was wrong before and is right now, isn't that a good thing?  Note: I find numerous flaws in his energy policy, but fewer flaws than virtually any energy policy I've seen from a Republican in my lifetime.  I think Obama's energy policy is much stronger, but also filled with a number of flaws.

Lesson Two: In my desire to elect the president I want, I too often hold Senator Obama to a much higher standard than any other candidate or politician I support

I found myself genuinely surprised, and initially hurt, by the idea that Senator Obama is actually a politician trying to get elected and not one who speaks the truth at all times.  I'm not being facetious here.  His positions on FISA, gun control and the death penalty left me, for a moment, questioning whether this was the person I really wanted to support.  This despite the fact that I've been personally inspired to take a more active part in government by him; read both his books and found his life story compelling and views on politics exactly in line with mine; agree with him on probably 80 percent of his policy positions; and think he's our only hope to start rebuilding our politics, foreign policy, infrastructure and economy.  

I need to get over the fact that Senator Obama will genuinely disagree with me on a number of issues and will likely take positions entirely for political gain when necessary.  This isn't to say I shouldn't attempt to push policy in the direction I want, or that I should just keep my mouth shut when I disagree with his statements or policies.  But I do need to keep a better perspective of what's at stake here, and why I can't let all of the issues that matter to me be drowned out by one position where I find him wanting.  

Lesson Three: While I say I want an informed debate, too often I get happy and excited by the mindless political stories I rail against, as long as they're aimed at the opponent.  

When I read the diary last night about John McCain owing taxes on his house in California, I was pumped.  Nice, a story against McCain that is easy to fit into a one sentence sound bite and use to demonize him.  Yes, it's ridiculous that he has seven houses and that the media calls Obama the elitist.  But I don't want any stories out there that take us down the road of debating which candidate is the elitist and which candidate is the "regular guy."  Just because it's against McCain, doesn't mean it's a legitimate story within the campaign that I have been trying to pressure the media to cover.  By hounding McCain on small stories like this, I think it only gives cover for the media to continue their baseless generalizations about Obama.  

Lesson Four: I have let this election stop me from following, talking about and trying to solve the problems that in a non-election cycle would be most important to me

The Mississippi River is still breaking levees and destroying homes, crops, and the hopes and dreams of thousands of Americans.  While the media doesn't follow this closely, I find it to be a personal scandal that I have not stayed on top of this story and done more to organize my friends, family and others to help out.  Instead, I have allowed the media to dictate to me when this story was "over," even as the levees continued to break.  This is personally unacceptable and something I hope to change about myself.  Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund

Lesson Five: Too often I think I'm an "expert" on things I don't know enough about.

There are really only two topics that I could call myself something of an expert on, the media, owing to my job, and the Middle East, owing to seven years of concerted study on the region.  Otherwise, I'm a novice trying to learn.  Yet, when a discussion of economic policy starts, I find myself acting like I know it all and disagreeing, without much though on my part, with people who have a much better understanding of our economic system.  Or, when a discussion of religion occurs, I find myself plowing in and often times judging other people's views that I really don't understand at all, owing to my lack of a religious background.  One thing I took away from Senator Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope" is the need to empathize with those who disagree with you and try to learn from their perspective.  Too often, I find myself miserably failing at this.  

Just to note, I'm not saying that I'm going to defer to people who know more facts than me about issues, but I am going to try to listen to them more and learn from their perspectives, in order to better inform my own opinions.  I should already be able to do this from my own experience anyways.  My political views have changed dramatically during my lifetime, which have proven to me that often times I am not right and that I do need to learn more.  Yet, in the moment, I too often find myself thinking, of course I'm right; this is what I believe.  That's a weak argument, even if I only use it with myself.  

Lesson Six: I need to understand the perspective of the vast majority of voters who don't follow the news and politics as closely as I do.

Many of my friends are not very political at all.  Almost all of them are Democrats, but they don't really care much about day to day politics.  For example, a friend of mine is very much an Obama supporter, so I asked her to come to a small picnic fund raiser for Obama yard signs that was literally three blocks from her house (and we're in the middle of upstate New York, so that's a pretty incredible coincidence).  She says to me, hell no, I'd rather do just about anything than talk politics for a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon.  At first this surprised the hell out of me.  How could you support Obama and not want to meet others who do and talk about how we can help him win.  But of course, that's how most people feel and there's nothing wrong with it.  She's a smart woman, who has specific issues that matter to her, but she has her own problems to worry about and deal with.  She's still going to make an educated choice with her vote in this election, it's just not going to consume the next 4 months of her life.  If I can't easily empathize with her perspective, it's going to be hard to convince people to support my candidate.