One last thought on Election '08.

McCain keeps saying that he is "a maverick ready to shake up Washington" thus implying that he is an outsider. True, McCain calls Arizona home as I once did. Like McCain I also called Washington D.C. home, until 1979 when my family pulled up stakes and moved West.

Something in McCain's speech has caught my ear this election, something that says he's spent far TOO long in Washington and he's no outsider at all and that is his pronunciation of the word "Washington". D.C., and the surrounding "beltline" areas of Northern Virginia and Maryland all commonly pronounce "Washington" as "Warshington", listen closely and you'll hear it - but generally NOT from Congressmen and women.

Why? In general these people bring their local dialects to Washington that reflect the patterns of speech of the people who elected them to office (except, of course, the carpetbaggers who are a different story altogether). McCain speaks like he's from Washington because he has been there so long and spent so much time there he has identified himself as a local of D.C. rather than of Arizona and that is reflected in his own speech.

Don't believe me? Listen to Libby Dole if you are able. She speaks with an accent complete free of any North Carolina influence. Why? She lived in D.C. and Kansas the last, oh, 25+ years, perhaps longer, and spends less days in North Carolina a year then I have hot meals in a month. It's sad really. If you don't spend time in your home state how can you know how to reperesent the people who elected you? It's really quite a quandary.

But I digress. McCain is no outsider of Warshington. He's a professional elected official, an "insider", a resdient of D.C. more than a resident of Arizona (despsite how many houses he may own in the state). Let's just hope he stays a Senator and then, just maybe, the good people of Arizona may later question if he is really representing them at all.