Of the many odd, outlier-ish aspects of the New Hampshire results — like McCain winning among both pro and anti-war Republicans — this one has to top them all. The woman who asked the question that made Hillary cry says, first, she’s not a plant. I was disinclined to believe that, since she has turned out to have been Jimmy Carter’s photographer. Small world and all that. Her name is Marianne Pernold Young, and at 64 years old she’s right in Hillary’s winning demographics — not young and not male. She asked the kind of question you’d expect of a Hillaryite, and especially of a campaign floral arrangement.

On Monday, Pernold Young went to Cafe Espresso in Portsmouth, N. H., where Clinton was taking questions from a group of about 16 undecided, most women, voters.

Standing in the back, she asked Clinton a question that appeared to take the senator by surprise.

“My question is very personal, how do you do it?” Pernold Young asked, mentioning that Clinton’s hair and appearance always looking perfectly coifed. “How do you, how do you keep upbeat and so wonderful?”

But shock of all shocks, Young fell for the same vacuous crap that’s drawing younger voters to another candidate.

But in the end, she said it was Obama’s message of hope and change that won her vote.

“I went to see Obama on Friday and he moved me to tears, I was in awe,” she said in a telephone interview with ABC News. “I’m 64 years old and nobody does that to me.”

We seem to be picking our leaders by the stupidest criteria. Can I make them cry? Then they win a primary. Can they make me cry? They get my vote. Do they represent some nebulous “change” without much in the way of specifics? Then they’re the next JFK. &c

I think I may be sick.