Held Prisoner in Hampton Roads

WTF do I do now?

I'm trying to figure out how to vote for. I've only voted "D" for president once in my life, and that was for Jimmy Carter - an act which I'm sure will earn me a permanent place in the 6th ring of Hell. That doesn't mean I would never put an X by a Democrat. There just hasn't been anyone on the left side of the ballot that I could stomach since then.

That pretty much sums it up for this year.

Obama is trying to paint himself as JFK redux. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have anywhere close to the experience JFK had. The only JFK-esque vibe he has is his magnetic personality. He’s a first-term senator who has spent most of his time in office running for another office. His inexperience has shown up in the debates. He's flowery and a great speaker. He's just smooched the pooch too many times on questions of substance. Besides that, he's so far left that he's coming back around the other side.

I agree with many of the analyses on Hillary. She is smart, driven and competent. However, doesn’t she give you a feeling of amorality? I see her as I saw Bill - chosing direction by the drift of the polls. She won’t compromise ALL of her values, but she sure is willing go which way the wind blows. That is amplified by her position (positions?) on Iraq.

Besides, I just can't see Bubba back at 1600 PA Ave. We had a Bush dynasty, and I don’t believe we need a Clinton dynasty. It wasn’t just the Republicans that put a negative tint on Bill’s tenure. He did plenty of that by himself . . . well, not exactly by himself :o).

I assume you have guessed by now that I’m a Republican - and you’re right. However, I’m not hard right. In fact, I’m incensed that GWB has squandered - almost singlehandedly - any gains made by the Republican party over the last 10-20 years, and he didn't need to do it. Think about it. Your taxes are lower. Interest rates are more affordable than the they were in the first thirty years of my life. The economy has some temporary problems now, but jobs have grown pretty significantly in the last five or six years. There’s been a bump in the stock market, but the trend is positive. Yet, he's probably the most hated president since Tricky Dick.

GWB threw away any positives the Republican party may have gained, in three significant ways - the first through his total inability to communicate with anyone (most of all the American people), the second through a mis-applied, mis-planned war on terrorism, and third, his sometimes lousy choice of advisers. Those three cluster bleeps took a party that was clearly making progress totally out of the picture.

We needed a strike back after 9/11. We couldn’t continue to sit back and take it on the chin after Kobar Towers, Mogadishu, the USS Cole, the first WTC bombing, and the embassy attacks. Iraq was the wrong choice, and Rummy, et. al. were the wrong choices to pursue the response. That being said, should we just have “dialoged” them into submission? It hadn’t worked for 20 years. Why now?

By the same token, I’m not hard left either, and that’s my primary worry about both Obama and Clinton. Obama seems to want the government to run everything. Handouts for everyone. Can we afford that? I work for the federal government, and the federal government should be the last choice to run just about any program.

I won’t be voting “D” for that reason. Both HRC and Obama are just too far to the left. My problem is that there isn’t anyone available for EITHER ticket that I’m comfortable with. I’m looking for a moderate, and I can’t find one.

I’m for change too. However, change for change’s sake scares me.