My prayer would be: In 2000, we were strung up by the Supreme Court and hanging chads. In 2004, we were gunned down by anti-swift boaters, so please don’t let us be impaled by Palin in 2008.

This Bush Administration will go down in history as an imperialistic cabal. I would have included Gen. Colin Powell, but for the fact that he was so humiliated when he came to realize that he had been used, he distanced himself from the whole mess. I hope I live long enough to read his book.

Remember the yellow cake from Niger, the aluminum tubes and the mushroom clouds that we were bombarded with incessantly by these men through the news media?

This group was doing everything possible to justify a war. And remember the respected chief of the United Nations inspection team, Mohamed ELBaradei, who asked for just a little more time, and he felt that he could say with assurance that there was no weapons of mass destruction?

This group in their rush to war would not hear of it. Democrats as well as Republicans voted to go to war with Iraq. But I think that we all know that in their drum roll for war, they manufactured a climate that labeled anyone as unpatriotic that voted against it, even if they didn’t agree with it. That’s the difference between a politician and a statesman — a politician will vote for whatever is popular.

There was at least one man, however, that stood out from the crowd and had enough backbone to vote his conviction. That man is Barack Obama. He epitomizes the traits and characteristics of a born leader. He brought himself up from a most humble origin to be the standard bearer for the Democratic Party of the United States of America, against all odds, by his sheer brilliance. ambition, hard work, determination, and with foresight and the upbringing help of a loving Christian set of maternal grandparents that instilled in him the morality and fortitude to accomplish great things. I almost omitted the fact that he attended Yale and Harvard and you can bet he didn’t have a cavalier attitude toward his educational opportunities like President Bush. He would have been thrown out immediately if he had gotten mediocre grades. Obama’s father, however, didn’t attend Harvard. In my opinion, all this in itself qualifies him to be president.

After all, if experience meant everything, just take a look at Cheney and Rumsfeld. They were such bunglers that a person would think that they were doing it on purpose.

Barack Obama has been the most maligned candidate for presidency in recent memory. He has been accused of being a practicing Muslim, being educated in Muslim schools, taking the oath of office using the Koran and having no respect for the flag, etc. And there are all of the redneck jokes and Internet gibberish, but he knows that there will always be small-minded, spiteful people. For the most part, he just continues to take the high road and let it roll off.

I have never read his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” nor do I know anything about its content. I can assure you though that there are a lot of people out there who ask the question, “how does this young black upstart have the audacity to think that he is qualified to be the President of the United States?”

I see that Bush is coming around to Obama’s way of thinking in some respects. He decided to talk to North Korea, of course after they had built seven atomic bombs. He also sent an emissary to Iran in the recent past.

I feel that Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, are the men for the hour. People in whom we can restore the trust and dignity that we have traditionally displayed for all the world to see. Men whom will not go to another Kyoto Treaty meeting dealing with global warming and tell our global partners, “Sorry, but we are not interested.” They will not mistake our attorney general for their very own. They will not scoop up the innocent along with guilty and hold them for years without trial. They are not going to torture innocent people.

Their opponents, John McCain and Sarah Palin, have already started down the road of lying and ignoring the facts, and all the things that the American people are trying to get away from. John McCain accused Obama of wanting to teach sex education in kindergarten. Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska until she saw that it wasn’t going to happen, then she was against it. So she took the money anyway and was able to give every man, woman and child $1,200, then sits back and listens at how popular she is with her constituents. For $1,200, I could probably learn to like her, even though I really don’t care much for right-wingers.

Now as far as John McCain’s qualifications for president, I probably could have voted for him in 2000; but in the meantime, I have become aware of his ready-fire-aim tendency, and am having serious doubts. If putting Sarah Palin one heartbeat away from the presidency is indicative of his thinking, I believe he’s lost it! I believe she has more flamboyancy than charisma, kind of a cross between Ann Richards, former governor of Texas, that was good with one-liners, and Annie Oakley, who could shoot a moose in the eye from 100 yards. Other than that, I think that she is a typical wife and mother that has been put in a spot that will inevitably put her in an embarrassing situation because she seems to know little to nothing of foreign affairs.

Let’s all go to the polls in November and put Obama and Biden in charge, and remember, this monetary situation that we have suddenly found ourselves in well may lead us into uncharted waters. We need the very brightest. Good luck to us all!

Charles J. Gregory lives in Charlestown.