My life is in an uproar. Not only am I dog-less for the moment but we are having our home painted. It looks like my house threw up. There is stuff everywhere. And just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, the painter moved into the bedroom so all the closets had to be emptied.
The chaos is getting to me.
That could explain why I am spending more time than usual watching CNN and Fox and MSNBC and obsessing about the U.S Presidential race.
I hope next week’s Pennslyvania primary settles things, because the Democrats are doing themselves no favours with their sniping. I can’t understand why Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama spend more time attacking one another than attacking Republican nominee John McCain.
Nor can I understand why the networks spent more time on the silly “I am less elite than him” debate than the fact neither democratic contender asked pointed questions of General Patraeus when he was before the Senate. The next American president is going to have to deal with Iraq from day one.
We know that McCain is hoping for a miracle-some sort of ill-defined victory. But other than differing on the timetable for withdrawing troops, Clinton and Obama haven’t said much about their long term strategy for Iraq. Do they pull out troops even if the country is about to implode?
Do they leave troops behind to prevent Iran from taking advantage of the political vaccuum created by a weak Iraqi government?
Do they wash their hands and let America retreat to its more traditional isolationist stance?
Those are the kinds of questions someone who wants to be Commander-in-Chief should be ready to answer, not who is more elitist; a former First Lady who made 200 million dollars last year, or a best friend of Oprah Winfrey who made 20 million on his best selling book.
A pox on both their houses.
The lone person who impresses me at this moment is Michelle Obama. She’s smart. A mom. An MBA. Black and female. The perfect presidential candidate-especially since she doesn’t want the Sisyphean job in the first place.
Mary Ellen Beninger
