Our Presidential Candidates in Light of the Crisis in Pakistan

Strange how easy it is to see the candidates clearly these days! There are significant stressors impacting them. First, there's Christmas. Surely they all felt entitled to a day or two of relaxation and family time, and found those anticipated days compromised by the pending Iowa caucuses. They may be travelling to Iowa without spouses and children. God knows some of them look sexually frustrated and/or just a tad hungover!

Now they have to be johnny-on-the-spot with their reactions to Benazir Bhutto's assassination yesterday, and the situation in Pakistan. This morning on msnbc's Morning Joe program, candidates are being interviewed.

Bill Richardson, who sells himself as a been-there-done-that candidate, thinks we should just ask Musharraf to step aside and allow an interim government to take over and move forward with elections. As if there is time or space for even a split-second vacuum in a nuclear-armed country that is descending into chaos! As if Musharraf would go for that! He's harboring Al Quaeda in the northwest,isn't he, and we expect him to do our sweet little bidding?! Bill Richardson's p.r. kids apparently told him to stand out in the cold Iowan snow for his TV interview this morning- good move! But then Mr. Richardson had to mess it up by looking uncomfortably cold and top it off by complaining about the weather. Not so tough after all?

When Giuliani takes the stage, he's comfortable and tough, and can rest on some laurels. But why must he be a one-man show? How hard would it be to say "I promise I'll select the finest advisors in the land to help me?" Oh that's right- his track record on selecting advisors is crooked, something he may not want to reference right now.

Romney looks like a very well-dressed and polite life-long shoe-salesman in a fancy department store when he talks about the Bhutto assassination - OUT OF HIS ELEMENT!- no way we can let him be Commander-in-Chief in such a dangerous world climate!

Huckabee- with his fake bookshelf cross- and his preening folksy goodness- would be, as the latest catchphrase has it- "Huckicide." Obama and Hilary just don't fit the bill right now. It's Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, Al Quaeda and nuclear weaponry we're up against! People who wrought the devastation of the World Trade Center, the Buddhas of Bamiyan and and so much more. Doesn't Obama need to be a few years older to deal with the villains in the Middle East? And who wants to see Hillary over there, getting shrill with the big guys? Not me!

Chris Dodd, so honorable, composed, competent and experienced- with years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee- knows what he's talking about, speaks clearly and firmly about everything, and on-the-spot about the dangers of a vacuum in Pakistan - Why can't people hear him?!?! Check out his amazing credentials at www.chrisdodd.com/about.

Right now, in the ever-evolving perceptual gestalt of the field of candidates, only Dodd looks safe to me. He will have the best advisors, not just favored friends around him. He's strong and consistent. He makes sense.

Then what are these murmurings of a Bloomberg-Gore ticket? What then? How about if Bloomberg just uses his wealth to target and raise the quality of life for young potential extremists around the world? Then instead of being steered by fantastical visions of virgins in heaven, they could experience the satisfactions of capitalism and free enterprise. They could be educated to understand and appreciate all the world's greatest art, music, literature, architecture, history, nature, philosophies, and to join the greater human experience, including love, kindness, and democracy. But there's not enough money in the world for that. What could change them? Who could save us?

Feeling Safe and Happy Flipflopping With the Romneys

At first I dreaded Romney's speech. Early in the week I had read and heard glimmerings of his intent to stake his heritage with John Fitzgerald Kennedy by separating his religion from his politics. I kept thinking "Oh dear, this is going to be embarrassing because Mitt is no Jack Kennedy." But it wasn't embarrassing. I think Mr. Romney has raised the bar in American politics and may have taught the evangelicals, no, all of us, a thing or two.

We know he has flip-flopped here and there. We also know he's politically savvy and pretty damn smooth. We know he's good looking. But did we know he could engage us in a national discussion that we've needed to have for a long time?

He has ostensibly stepped aside from the usual political parlance to give us a brush-up lesson in American History, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, church and state. He has placed his religion in the grand and safe context of the original lofty principles of the United States of America. How can we fault him on this? He comes out smelling like a rose. Maybe like a Rose Garden?

I remember my mother in front of the TV in 1968, admiring Mitt's father George Romney when he ran for President. She thought he was handsome. I could see she was charmed. She laughed sympathetically about George's claim that he had been brainwashed into supporting the Vietnam War. She loved his flipflopping in a vaguely sensual way. I worried my father would get home early and see us, whiskey sours in hand, watching clips of George on the Merv Griffin show. I couldn't let him see those stars shining in mom's eyes for another man!

And now I'm doing it! The lights are on in my eyes for Mitt, though I know now that I may flipflop at any time. And that it's ok, and safe, to feel a little excited about a Romney.