Vote for me, here's why.(on the right)

NEW YORK, JANUARY 13

 
      You have forty-five seconds to tell the 
   voters why they should write your name 
   down in the Iowa caucus. 
 
      Whistle! ... Whistle! Thank you very 
   much. We will now hear from ... 

THE awful smell in the room is human vanity. It is always a factor. The most self-sacrificing monk has vanity. He is asking the Lord to note the special privations he is undertaking in His name. Where banality reigns, you have the field marshal who wants to kill three times as many of the enemy as they succeed in killing of our own men, and the parliamentarian who wonders whether history will note his skills in contriving a majority vote for that bill. This gets into very big time when it is a man given 45 seconds to tell the audience why he should win the Iowa caucus.

The reason this is so difficult is that we are being asked to identify ourselves with a national cause which is not easy to decipher. All the candidates agree that things are not going, in Iraq, as well as they should go. Dr. Dean says that we should never have gone to Iraq in the first place. Well, you might say, er yes, maybe we shouldn't have gone to Iraq. But voting for Dean doesn't transport you back to February 2003, with the option of telling the planes to turn off their engines, and the ships to go back out to sea. So what do you actually accomplish?

Rep. Gephardt is determined to protect American jobs, many of them eliminated by the movement of capital to parts of the world where labor is cheaper. He has a point. Something ought to be done to prevent an erosion of U.S. jobs. Oh, and he also wants health insurance--no wrinkles, no fine-print deductions--for young Americans, which is a very good idea.

Sen. Edwards from North Carolina is telling us--he can't fool me, I've been around a bit--that he is a good looking guy who made his own way up the ladder; he's obviously bright and persuasive, and he's in favor ...