If 2008 front-running Republicans Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney or Democrat Hillary Clinton are their parties' presidential nominees, voters once again are left with choosing candidates slim on character and short on ideals.
A sizeable bloc of voters in one poll already has spotted Hillary: 48 percent give her a negative reading. The former first lady is viewed as a cold, methodical political mechanic who dodges and weaves and resorts to doublespeak to confuse voters as well as to pander. Nothing lofty in her vision there.
And as primary campaigning picks up steam, Giuiliani and Romney are being unmasked, by themselves and a belatedly diligent media, as the best liars of the Republican bunch.
Romney changes positions on issues so quickly he looks like a pancake in perpetual motion. Romney also comes across as an oily penny stocks salesman trying to con country yokels, as well as bearing a striking similarity to the sci-fi robotic character Max Headroom.
Giuliani's problem is his ethics and morals are thoroughly corrupt. New York media finally are opening the cesspool of Giuliani's years as Gotham mayor.
Forget about three marriages and 180-degree turns on issues to appeal to the GOP's 30-percent right-wing base. What really reveals his character is why he spent thousands and thousands of dollars of taxpayer funds on adulterous trysts with his soon-to-be current wife, for which costs were scattered among obscure city agencies to conceal them from the public.
As an indicator of what sort of White House Giuliani would staff, he's now being defended by his onetime police commissioner and political crony Bernard Kerik, recently indicted on 16 criminal charges. Among Kerik's credentials was his sleazy commandeering of an apartment reserved for 9/11 rescue workers near the Trade Center rubble, which he used as lover's nest.
Which brings us to Barack Obama. His most impressive and engaging quality is his idealism, the belief Washington and the White House can do better for Americans than the now-so-familiar governance driven by greed, lobbyists and authoritarians. Does America need another president boasting he's a tougher gunslinger eager to go to war, or that God inspires his thinking, or that tailors decisions that appeal to evangelicals?
George W. Bush and his cronies have given us a bellyful of faith-based hypocrisy, lies for political ends, GI deaths and broken bodies, an international reputation for secret prisons and torture, bankrupt spending, a shredded constitution.
Americans need a president with a heart and soul who can restore a belief in ideals that founded the nation.
