Take a breath. Pay attention. Figure out what matters.

Don’t worry, I’m not ordering you around. Those commands are reminders for me — but feel free to borrow my advice to myself.

So here it is, all I have to say just now about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

First, let’s remember that it is not my job to endorse politicians. It is not my job to compare the national platforms of political parties. My job is to eye the landscape from where I’m sitting and share a point of view — hopefully, a thoughtful one.

I considered not writing about Palin at all. People will think what they think, depending on their political stripes and beliefs. Like all of you, I’m watching the fallout from Sen. John McCain’s surprise choice for a running mate on the Republican presidential ticket as it happens.

Palin is impossible to ignore. She is all anyone has talked about since McCain tapped her Aug. 29. Wow, just 10 days ago?

On the morning McCain announced his choice, none of us could have guessed that within the week The New York Times would publish a front-page photo of him greeting Levi Johnston, the boyfriend of Palin’s pregnant 17-year-old daughter Bristol.

The genie is out of the bottle, I’m afraid.

By Thursday, I found online images of the covers of US Magazine, with its “Babies, Lies &Scandal” headline under Gov. Palin’s picture, and of OK! Magazine, touting “A Mother’s Painful Choice” and “Sarah Palin’s Baby Scandal.”

Good grief, it’s only September. In the distracting days to come, remember my personal mantra for the long campaign season. Let’s repeat: Take a breath. Pay attention. Figure out what matters.

Remember, too, that what matters for you and your country are not the same things that matter within the four walls of the Palin, McCain, Obama or Biden families.

If I had five kids, most of them young enough to still be at home and one of them a baby with special needs, would I say yes to running for vice president? (Let’s pretend I’m qualified.) I don’t think I would say yes, because of those children.

We can argue about whether it’s sexist to say that, and whether men are ever scrutinized because they have children and high-powered careers. For me, it’s a personal choice, nothing sexist about it. By necessity, I have worked while raising three children. If I were vice president, I doubt I’d be the one doing the raising.

Those sorts of questions ought to seriously matter to Palin and her husband and children, who surely grappled with issues of her time and energies as she ran for and served as Alaska’s governor. How the Palins raise their children is their business. We all have opinions about that, but it ought not matter to us as voters.

No question, the private lives of both the presidential and vice presidential candidates’ families will receive intense coverage. For good or ill, that’s now part of the game. Within a day of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s selection of Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate, I knew not only that his wife Jill has a doctoral degree and teaches at a community college, but that she runs five miles a day.

And I can’t resist checking out pictures of Palin years ago as a beauty pageant contestant, or working in TV news. In the same way, I couldn’t help but read Vogue magazine’s recent stories about Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain. Mrs. McCain, Vogue says, wears size zero jeans — not exactly an endearing fact for many women, but one that’s now stuck in my brain.

Does any of that matter? To them, sure. Not to us.

Amusement, entertainment, voyeurism, whatever we call it, all this focus on personal tidbits, no matter how riveting, draws us away from what matters.

The more we become consumers of celebrity-style coverage of political candidates, the more of it we’ll get — and the less solid information we may have. It isn’t too hard to see how even the candidates’ head-to-head debates could be reduced to trivial personal jabs.

This year more than ever, it will take a careful consumer of information to filter out aspects of candidates’ lives that don’t really matter, and to discern where they stand on issues that will help or hurt you, and your country.

Take a breath. Pay attention. Figure out what matters.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.