Right choices, at home and abroad

Finally, they have it right.

Former armoured corps general Gordon O'Connor has left Defense and headed to Revenue, while Peter MacKay has moved from Foreign Affairs to Defense.

O'Connor got caught up in wreckage the Liberals left behind: the matter of military funeral expenses caught him unprepared, as did the issue of treatment of captured Afghan terrorists by Afghan officials.

The Defense portfolio should always go to an Atlantic Canadian. Whereas many other parts of the country take some perverted pride in the incorrect statement "Canada isn't a military country," we here in Atlantic Canada have never thought such fluff. We have the bases, the per capita participation and heritage.

MacKay will do well in the position. He follows in the steps of Canning's Sir Frederick Borden, who helped create the modern Canadian armed forces at the turn of the last century, and Amherst's Second World War Defense Minister, Col. J.L. Ralston.

Meanwhile, it's getting closer to 2008, when the United States is set to go through its big political metamorphosis: from George W. Bush and his era to his successor, whoever that may be, and his or her era.

I love American election campaigns. They are so confusing, shameless and tacky. What decent country and political party would endorse trashing a candidate's war record, as was done to John Kerry?

Each party does state primaries, in which presidential candidate hopefuls go about seeking support -- being totally shameless in how they get it. It gets the issues out, some say. But aren't they already preordained, as they are here in Canada?

My choice for president is Senator Hillary Clinton. She has the mind and the guts. She has the experience. She's the only one qualified. The other Democrats are a faceless mob of lightweights.

The Republicans saw any hope of re-election dashed in the sands of the current Mesopotamian gotterdammerung. Only former state secretary Gen. Colin Powell could pull it out of the fire. He's the one who opposed the war, telling Bush II, if you break it, you own it.

For some reason, the Americans seem afraid of electing a woman chief of state and government. They have former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as an example, and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth as a solid rock of duty and responsibility. Any idea a woman can't cut it in a conflict had better shift: the Argentines found the truth when they tangled with Thatcher over the Falklands 25 years ago, the Pakistanis learned painfully when they got into a disastrous dustup with the now late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1971 and the Arabs got snapped back into place by the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Maier in 1973. Each of them at least matched their military skills with domestic ones - and I don't mean tidying up the abode.

The Americans? You never know what they will do.