Last night, ever eager to provide something for you, our loyal readers, to peruse as you begin your day, I organized an idea I’d been considering (and expounding on in conversations with friends) on why the President won’t be able to get away with Bush-bashing for much longer.  As long as he’s seen as the new guy, Americans wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt and will accept his whining as a justifiable expression of frustration at the difficulty of dealing with a new job.

We Americans, as Jennifer Rubin puts it, want our presidents “to succeed.”

Once I finished the post, I was eager to get it done so I could get to bed.  So, I came up with the best title I could, Blaming Bush (& GOP) won’t help Obama recover* lost popularity*, even if it wasn’t ideal and unlikely to attract much attention–even though I thought I might have had an interesting insight–that we cut a new President some slack up until Labor Day because by that time, we’ve come back from our summer recreation to find that the same president is there who had been there when we turned away from regular news-watching (on or about Memorial Day).

I find that like last night, many of my titles don’t perfectly fit the post to which they’re attached (and then sometimes our critics respond to the title and not the post).  Or don’t get at the essence of the idea I’m trying to express.  Other times, however, the title comes with the post idea and on occasion has preceded it.  More often than not, as last night, I’m just eager to find something that will work so I can get the post up and get on with my day (or move on to another post).

But, if I do find a clever way to “package” the idea, I increase the likelihood of links and thus attract more attention to the post.  Sometimes, it seems a good title more readily attracts notice than does a thoughtful post.  And yet the great irony is that often after putting a lot of time and thought into a post of which I’m particularly proud, I’m mentally drained and just eager to get it done so tack on a title that does the trick (as best it can).  So the title fails to attract the punch (I believe) the post does.

Maybe we’ve heard this all before, you know, when they talk about books and covers.

*So unhappy was I with the title that I actually tweaker it earlier today.