2008 Elections: What Do YOU Look For In A President?

We'd really like to know. Feel free to list the qualities that you think the President of the country should have.

These are the qualities we'd like to see:

• Dignity
  
  After seven years of a clown who tries to give uninvited unwanted massages to heads of state in public, who grabs a foreign dignitary's sleeve to drag him in a different direction, who talks with his mouth full, who breaks into a bad soft-shoe shuffle in front of reporters, who can't speak in complete sentences, please give us a President with dignity. One who doesn't look like their clothes have been slept in, or show up for conferences with bruises on their face, or choke on pretzels. Please.
  
  
• Intelligence
  
  No more idiots who can't pronounce words with more than two syllables. It's not too much to ask. We don't need an Einstein, but we do need someone who doesn't mistake "ascertain" for "asshole."
  
  
• Integrity
  
  No more liars. We've had 20 years of lying weasels and that's plenty. In our book, "misspeak" is just another word for "lie." We don't expect the President to tell us every single thing that goes on &mdash sometimes national security requires a President to keep some things under wraps. But after 935 lies about ONE war, we have the right to expect our next President not to indulge in lying as a competition event.
  
  
• Respect for the Constitution
  
  We realize it's going to take more than four years to undo all the damage the last bunch of crooks and liars have wreaked on the nation. Americans don't want their email, telephone calls, and letters read by the minions of the National Security apparatus. We want our next President to save the spying for terrorists, at home and abroad. Leave the average citizen's bank records and health records out of it. Please.
  
  
• Diplomacy
  
  Enough with all the bullying of foreign dignitaries and browbeating other nations &mdash it just makes them all hate us and makes us more unsafe. It's one world now, whether or not we want it, and some of us have to fly to foreign countries all the time on business. It's nasty knowing that, thanks to the unelected idiot's obnoxious attitudes, you could be the target of some serious hatred. Never before have we had to threaten, browbeat, and bluster, yet we've always had a good record of working with others, and had love and respect around the world. Please, Next President, help us get that back.
  
  
• Foresight
  
  This is the most important quality. Seven years of hearing incompetent buffoons whine endlessly about "Nobody could have anticipated ..." when there's ample evidence out there that anyone with two brain cells who cared about the country could indeed have anticipated, and acted. Seven years of watching the country slide down the tubes at increasing speed. Enough. We have the right to have a leader who will think, and look into the future, and exercise good judgment.

And here we want to illustrate one among our three candidates who has demonstrated foresight. While John McCain breaks the campaign finance law that he enacted, while Hillary Clinton announces that she doesn't understand what Alan Greenspan, the architect of our current economic collapse, is saying, Barack Obama wrote this letter a year ago to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

In the letter, Senator Obama outlines the coming foreclosure crisis and urges Bernanke and Paulson to act quickly to call a summit of service providers and public interest advocates in the mortgage and financial industry to address these grave concerns. He details, point by point, steps that both addressees should consider to deal with the looming crisis.

A year ago, John McCain was singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." Hillary Clinton was addressing various groups in the Democratic Party raising funds for her Presidential campaign. If Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson had responded immediately to Senator Obama's letter and taken action a year ago, we would not be sitting here watching housing prices slide ever lower as the cost of food, gas, and health care soars to unaffordable levels.

Stumble It!