Perhaps you’ll understand if I claim a certain vindication here. Two weeks ago, I suggested that John Edwards’ hair matters because the importance he places on his ‘do makes it OK for ordinary voters to likewise attach some significance to it. In response, I got charged by one reader of engaging in Coulterfication.

But now, a highly respected member of the mainstream media, an award-wining columnist and the Raleigh News & Observer’s official deep thinker — this fellow is, after all, the paper’s officially designated ideas writer — agrees. More or less.

(That lavish, drum roll of an introduction is an inside joke, by the way. The writer to whom I refer is J. Peder Zane, my former N&O colleague and still a pal. He is indeed a gifted writer and a smart guy, but he’s also a native New Yorker and a Yankees fan. Those last two things tend to keep him on permanent probation among decent, God-fearing folk.)

Zane’s article, which you can read here, makes the point that such “issues” as Edwards’ hair and Hillary Clinton’s cleavage are worth media attention because voters talk about them. And people talk about those things, of course, because they’re in the news. Yes, there’s a certain chicken-or-egg circularity at work in that argument, but it’s undeniably true. The media can report something, but it can’t make people be interested in it. Conversely, it can decide to not report something else, but can’t prevent people from being interested in it anyway. Popular fascination is the freest commodity you’ll find. Its market is totally resistant to regulation.

I suspect that popular interest in such things as hair and cleavage are symptomatic of an underlying problem — specifically, the relentless blandness of our leaders and the slipperiness of their policy positions. Politicians tend to make sweeping, crowd-pleasing utterances — Cure poverty! Bring the troops home! Fight terror! — that are either poll-driven or nakedly designed to appeal to their base of support. While voters often respond to those simple, uncomplicated exhortations, they also look for the small, telling indicators that help them round out their impressions of a candidate. They’re desperate for anything that will help them cull the political herd wisely and efficiently.

It would be silly to base a voting decision solely on the basis of something as inconsequential as a haircut or a cleavage-revealing blouse. But it’s also silly to declare that those things are meaningless, and that more important issues are somehow being neglected if attention is momentarily focused on them. A cheap haircut wouldn’t lose Edwards nearly as many votes as he’d attract by simply wandering into a different small-town barbershop for a trim every week. But the fact that Edwards doesn’t take that endearing, folksy step tells me that he considers his hair too important to be trusted to an ordinary barber. Why shouldn’t I ponder what that says about his priorities?

U.S. congressman Walter Jones isn’t my representative, which means that I didn’t hire him and therefore his job performance is somebody else’s worry. But since he’s sticking his nose into other people’s business, so will I. Specifically, his business.

Last week, Jones saw fit to get himself involved in the Michael Vick affair. As you may know, Vick is an NFL quarterback who’s been charged in federal court with being involved in an illegal dogfighting ring. Although this seems like something for the courts and the NFL to deal with, Jones decided that it’s worth the attention of a member of Congress. He subsequently drafted a letter to the NFL commissioner insisting that Vick be suspended.

Well, if Jones can shoot off letters over matters that have nothing to do with his life or job, then so can I. Here goes:

Dear Rep. Jones: Don’t you have more important things to do than worry about Michael Vick? You’re supposed to be helping to run the globe’s most important nation, for God’s sake. What possible justification — other than just political grandstanding — can you offer to explain this investment of your staff’s time in this matter? I don’t mean to be indelicate here, but do you have a hot thing going with a PETA chick? That’s about the only thing that could explain it. Men sometimes do strange things to endear themselves to women.

Even more alarming is your casual disdain for the due process of law. Oh sure, your letter to the NFL commissioner makes the obligatory nod toward the concept of innocent until proven guilty, but I was stopped short by this phrase later in the missive: “Unless and until Mr. Vick can clear his name in what can only be classified as a disgraceful and sadistic criminal pursuit, he should be suspended from play in the NFL.”

Surely you understand that Vick doesn’t have to clear his name, which is another way of saying ” … until Mr. Vick can prove himself innocent.” We start with the belief that his name is just fine, and that it’s the jury’s job to decide otherwise. (You haven’t already forgotten the lessons of the Duke lacrosse case, have you? Does the name “Nifong” ring a bell?) And it sounds like you’ve already decided there was a criminal enterprise at work here. Again with the guilty stuff. Here’s an idea: Leave the summary judgments to Nancy Grace. She’s got a lot more practice at whipping up the torch-and-pitchfork crowd.

The NFL doesn’t need help or advice in this matter. And if it does, all it has to do is dial into any sports-talk radio show, where every blowhard has a firm opinion on the Vick matter. If you feel the need to weigh in on this topic, call one of the talk shows — at night, when you’re off the public’s time clock.

If I had any true ability to see into the future, I wouldn’t be wasting my time maintaining this website for an audience of eight or so. I would have already won the lottery, and I’d have my fanny parked in a beach chair, wondering if 10 a.m. is too early to have a mai tai.

Keep that in mind, then, as I make this prediction: Eventually, one of the challenges to industry-recruitment incentives will succeed.

If you’re a policy wonk you know all about this issue, but if you have an actual life, you may be fuzzy on the details. Here they are: States have become more vigorous over the years in offering tax breaks to companies in the hope of enticing them to build a facility within their borders. North Carolina has had some notable success with this recently, attracting both a Dell computer plant and a Google “server farm.” (I’m done with the explanations. If you don’t know what a “server farm” is, go ask your child.) The rationale behind offering sizable tax breaks — for Google, it was $90 million over 30 years — is that jobs get created. And, of course, the people with those jobs will then pay taxes themselves. Ergo, life is good, at least in theory.

But those tax deals have drawn dissent from people who know their way around a courtroom, specifically the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law. It filed a lawsuit opposing the Dell deal, but lost. It’s trying again, this time in hopes of derailing the Google tax giveaway.

It’ll probably lose that one, too, because courts are all about precedent. But at some point, the giveaways will grow so large as competition for industrial plants intensifies that the social gag reflex will kick in. Most of us can live with the knowledge that this country’s tax system is an unruly hodgepodge of breaks and credits, because almost all of us get some kind of benefit from it. Still, at a certain moment in the future a court somewhere will decide that it can no longer ignore the charade that all businesses enjoy equal protection under the law even as state legislatures pass out huge tax breaks to specific companies.

That decision will surely cause enormous upheaval, but good will come of it. Companies will then have to decide to locate somewhere because they like, for instance, the climate.

And no legislature has yet figured out a way to vote a change in the weather.