What You See . . .

This may come as a shock to a reader or two, but the season is upon us and beginning in just two months voters will participate in what may be the most important decision Americans have had to make in a lifetime: Who can best lead our country out of this mess?

The next President of the United States will be presented with what I liken to a pile of pick-up-sticks, each with its own label:

Iraq. Iran. Israel. Pakistan. The economy. Mortgage crisis. Health care. Medicare. SCHIP. Foreign policy. Education. Taxes. Drugs. Crime. Trade. Energy. Immigration. Environment. Social Security.

And those are just the ones we can see from here.

Where to begin? Which one to try to extract first from the stack — ever so carefully, so as not to collapse the whole?

Democratic and Republican candidates for President have been on the road for what seems years (well, in one or two cases I guess that is true) in search of support among various constituencies north, south, east and west, and interest groups however miniscule, and the question “Did you watch the debate?” is most often answered, “Which one?”

We haven’t seen a lot of the candidates here in Texas, of course, because Texas doesn’t get to vote in a primary until next March, by which time it may be all over. Or so the pundits tell us. Personally, I dearly hope not.

What I’d give for the old days of “brokered” conventions! Where the party faithful noisily got together in some welcoming city and listened for several days as an array of Presidential hopefuls and their supporters sought their votes; back when they engaged in debate, argument, negotiations and sometimes even arm-twisting to arrive at a chosen candidate for President!

Well, we have what we have, and we have to deal with it.

And first of all we have to ignore the pundits, who do a public disservice in declaring the “inevitability” of one candidate or another. I can’t quarrel with publishing the results of legitimate polling — that’s just news (and may in fact serve as a call to work harder for some candidates!). But the folks who tell us the numbers need to stop there and let us decide what to make of them.

We have a responsibility, with so little time left (at least a good chunk of which will be pretty much consumed by the holidays), to pay as close attention from now on to what the candidates are saying and doing as if our lives depended on the outcome, which may be the case.

For starters, take the Democratic “front-runner” — please!

Now I suppose if I weren’t worried about this I’d love the idea of inevitability, but I do have some concerns and I am worried (though this may be surprising to some): I don’t see what I believe America needs, and I do see what I believe America most assuredly does not need.

America needs a leader who is strong, yes, but you could say that anyone who can endure the slings and arrows and the grueling trek of an almost two-year presidential campaign just about qualifies.

And a lot of candidates talk about the importance of having one kind of “experience” or another, but the truth is there is no experience that in itself can prepare you for the singular position of world leader. It’s the people around the President to whom we should pay attention, for there you see what you are likely to get. As we ought to know by now.

Anyway, Hillary Clinton’s so-called “strength and experience” is mostly a myth. The former consists of committee appointments she sought out when she came to the Senate, some legislative moves cynically calculated to make her look tough and war-like, and an occasional war-like statement on the stump.

Her “experience” includes voting in the Senate (following President Bush) to ban flag burning and in favor of bankruptcy legislation the credit companies loved, not to mention in favor of allowing Bush to take us to war in Iraq and for legislation that might allow him to take us to war in Iran, and oh yes, before that living in the White House when her husband was President.

And of course there was the disastrous health care plan, put together in secret meetings with unidentified advisers (remind you of anyone?), that she couldn’t get through Congress despite having the full force of the White House at her disposal. So we take all we learn from listening and watching and then try to envision the kind of presidency we’d have. And here’s my problem:

I don't see a single decision being made without calculation as to reelection, and I don't see the political climate getting any better. Most troubling, I see a continuation of the kind of outright secrecy and dissembling that we've lived with throughout the current administration's tenure.

Now I don’t offer this as a comprehensive evaluation of this candidate; I just wanted to show the reader why it may be useful to pay really, really close attention to what is being said and done by those who want us to trust them with our country and our world.

I know that a lot of women, regardless of party, are supporting Hillary because they understandably are thrilled at the prospect of a woman president (as I would be, were it the right one). The perfect irony is that if she weren’t the wife of Bill Clinton she would be practically unknown.