Overheard

The scene: outside a downtown Troy bus shelter, in the shadow of the shell of a KFC that had recently become a Chinese buffet and had more recently "closed for renovation." The players: a young black man with what looked like a wool cap on his head and a young woman with an accent whose origin I couldn't place. Both appeared to be college students. The man was asking the woman whom she supported for the presidency. She said she was leaning toward Senator McCain. Asked why, she said she thought the economy was the most important issue and that McCain was the best candidate on the economy. The man reminded her that McCain was more likely than either Democrat to start a war, and while some people believed that war would stimulate the economy, he argued to the contrary. But the prospect of war was irrelevant to the woman's analysis. She based her support for McCain on the alleged fact that neither Democrat was willing to vote for a certain bill. She struggled to explain it, and the man understood her to mean some legislation against lobbyists, but to me it sounded like she meant a bill to ban earmarks. She worried that too much government spending would make the economy worse, but then a bus came and it was the man's bus and mine and we left her there. One woman's opinion does not a sample make, but the more I hear, the more I'll report, and then we can try to draw conclusions.