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.

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.

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.

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.

After I left the White House, I kept a foothold in the business of American politics as a talk-show host, analyst, commentator, speechmaker, and occasional writer. I was no longer a practitioner, but I was still a partisan, a Democrat, a blue-stater through and through.

I'm not in politics.

After all is said that can be said upon the liquor traffic, its influence is degrading upon the individual, the family, politics and business, and upon everything that you touch in this old world.

Ferdinand was a gold trader. He was a lawyer for mining companies. When he entered politics in l949, he had tons and tons of gold. When Bill Gates was a college dropout, Ferdinand already possessed billions of dollars and tons of gold. It wasn't stolen.

There are few things in politics more annoying than the Right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word 'freedom' that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed, that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty, the noblest cause of them all.

This aesthetic quality, then, is what politics is all about. It's authenticity that separates winners from losers, good politics from bad, and he-man leader-types from consultant-directed puppet-boys.