FROM CANADA ...THE OBVIOUS!

Theo Caldwell,  National Post (Canada) Wednesday,
December 26, 2007

An obvious choice can  be unnerving. When the apparent perfection of one option or the  unspeakable awfulness of another makes a decision seem too  easy, it is human nature to become  suspicious.

This instinct intensifies as the stakes  of the given choice are raised. American voters know no  greater responsibility to their country and to the  world than to select their president wisely. While we do not  yet know who the Democrat and Republican nominees will be, any  combination of the leading candidates from either party will make for  the most obvious choice put to American voters in  a generation. To wit, none of the Democrats has any business  being president.

This pronouncement has less to do  with any apparent perfection among the Republican candidates than  with the intellectual and experiential paucity evinced  by the Democratic field. “Not ready for prime time,” goes  the vernacular, but this does not suffice to describe how bad things  are. Alongside Hillary Clinton, add Barack Obama’s kindergarten  essays to an already confused conversation about  Dennis Kucinich’s UFO sightings, dueling  celebrity endorsements and who can be quickest to retreat  from America’s global conflict and raise taxes on  the American people, and it becomes clear that these  are profoundly unserious individuals.

To be  sure, there has been a fair amount of rubbish and rhubarb on the  Republican side (Ron Paul, call your office), but even a cursory  review of the legislative and professional records of the  leading contenders from each party reveals a disparity  akin to adults competing with children.

For  the Republicans, Rudy Giuliani served as a two-term mayor of New York  City, turning a budget deficit into a surplus and taming what was  thought to be an ungovernable metropolis. Prior to that,  he held the third-highest rank in the Reagan  Justice Department, obtaining over 4,000 convictions.  Mitt Romney, before serving as governor of  Massachusetts, founded a venture capital firm that created  billions of dollars in shareholder value, and he then went  on to save the Salt Lake City Olympics. While much is made  of Mike Huckabee’s history as a Baptist minister, he was also a  governor for more than a decade and, while Arkansas is hardly a  “cradle of presidents,” it has launched at least one  previous chief executive to national office. John  McCain’s legislative and military career spans five  decades, with half that time having been spent in  the Congress. Even Fred Thompson, whose excess  of nonchalance has transformed his once-promising campaign  into nothing more than a theoretical poss ibility, has more  experience in the U.S. Senate than any of the leading Democratic  candidates.

With just over one term as a Senator to her  credit, Hillary Clinton boasts the most extensive record  of the potential Democratic nominees. In that time, Senator  Clinton cannot claim a single legislative accomplishment of note, and  she is best known lately for requesting $1-million from Congress for  a museum to commemorate Woodstock.

Barack  Obama is nearing the halfway point of his first term in the Senate,  having previously served as an Illinois state legislator and, as  Clinton has correctly pointed out, has done nothing but run  for president since he first arrived in Washington.  Between  calling for the invasion of Pakistan and fumbling a simple question  on driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, Obama has shown that he is  not the fellow to whom the nation ought to hike the  nuclear football.

John Edwards, meanwhile, embodies the  adage that the American people will elect anyone to Congress  -- once. From his $1,200 haircuts to his personal war on  poverty, proclaimed from the porch of his 28,000-square-foot home,  purchased with the proceeds of preposterous lawsuits exploiting  infant cerebral palsy, Edwards is living proof that history can  play out as tragedy and farce  simultaneously.
Forget for a moment all that you  believe about public policy. Discard your notions about taxes  and Iraq, free trade and crime, and consider solely  the experience of these two sets of candidates. Is there any  serious issue that you would prefer to entrust to a person with the  Democrats’ experience, rather than that of any of the  Republicans?

Now consider the state of debate in each  party.  While the Republicans compare tax proposals and  the best way to prosecute the War on Terror, Democrats are  divining the patterns and meaning of the glitter and dried macaroni  glued to the page of one of their leading candidate’s kindergarten  projects.

Does this decision not become unsettlingly  simple?