To the editor:

As the final note in his Saturday Column regarding the selection process for college presidents, Dolph Simons Jr. paints the presidential campaign as a contest between “leadership, vision, courage, honesty and tested under fire” on one hand versus rhetorical and oratorical skills, record amounts of campaign contributions, and philosophical answers and solutions to challenging problems on the other. He concludes by asking “Which story will American voters buy.”

To where did his notion of best-qualified candidates disappear? Surely the presidency of the U.S. and the V.P. position deserve a higher level of scrutiny than the selection of a university administrator does, particularly when the candidate for president is the oldest person ever running for the office. Why isn’t that the topic of his Saturday Column coda?

People may question Barack Obama’s leadership, but he is delivering cogent speeches on the issues which are of greatest concern to me. As a relative newcomer to national politics, he chose a running mate with longstanding foreign policy experience. John McCain, on the other hand, a veteran U.S. senator, chooses relatively unknown and substantially unqualified Sarah Palin.

GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel recently said: “I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, ‘I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia.’ That kind of thing is insulting to the American people.” Hagel demonstrates leadership, vision, courage and honesty in saying so. We should be listening. That’s the story I’m buying.

Ray Petty,
Lawrence