The debate yesterday between Barack Obama and John McCain swiveled attention away from Sarah Palin, the novelty who could matter, and back on the candidates themselves, as it should be.

What happens on the first Tuesday of November has been described as “;historic,”; “;important”; and “;critical,”; and though politicians and civic-affairs worrywarts always say such things in election years, this time it's for real.

Alert voters know this and it would be unimaginable for even the most indolent participants in the political process to be unaware of the stakes. But through Nov. 3, we will be flooded with fierce campaigning and judging from the punches and counterpunches leading up to yesterday's forum, much of it won't be about substance. It will be chaff.

It will be about who's been bad, who will be badder for the country and who has associated with the baddest people. Doing much of the heavy lifting will be Palin, who has shown an inborn ability to preach the faith of fear and division.

Though the chance that she might become president has to be considered in the same way voters have to consider that Joe Biden also might, Palin's biggest flaw isn't a lack of intelligence or the body of knowledge a person needs to lead the country well.

Palin's weaknesses are an overreaching ambition with no agenda but to win and a rigid certainty that she knows best.

We've had almost eight years of that. We've had almost eight years of rib-elbowing and eye-gouging, of one-upping at the expense of needed solutions on energy, education and a host of other issues.

We've had eight years of whistling past the economic graveyard, of paternalistic encouragement to buy too much and borrow even more, as if debt, personal and national, had no consequences.

We've had years of asking what the country can do for me-me-me, and demanding more while turning away from the wars that have drained blood, lives and treasure.

You can't fault Palin for spouting simplistic rhetoric, for winking and vamping on the trail. That's her role in the political drama and many voters respond to empty platitudes and frenetic enthusiasm because it's easier to blame than to hope for better.

In recent days, she's also shown a talent for blood-sport, riling up her supporters to the point where they respond to her exhortations with insults, racial slurs and obscenities against Obama, African-Americans, the news media, amorphous elitists in Washington and on both coasts - whoever she chooses to define as enemies of freedom, small towns and the American way.

We've had enough of that, too.

While Palin can be dismissed as mere fodder for late-night comedy, she represents a greater danger. She characterizes the toxins that have increasingly poisoned politics and crippled the country.

She is a distraction, a sideshow. In choosing a new president, voters have to shut out the noise and evaluate which candidate has the insight and capacity to get us out of a mess of trouble and who understands that winning is just the beginning, the means to governing and not the goal.