(Reprise article)

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen eviscerated GOP VP rival Dan Quayle with this debate remark stating “he was no Jack Kennedy.” Four years ago I cast a vote AGAINST George H. W. Bush’s son rather than FOR John Kerry. I intend to vote FOR a candidate this year.

You are making it very difficult.

As a lifelong Democrat I am ecstatic with this year’s wealth of choices. I cast a Super Tuesday ballot from abroad for your rival Senator Obama. I was one of the early converts to his message of hope and saw in him a hybrid of Jack Kennedy and Martin Luther King. His message of healing was a soothing balm to those of us living overseas who are daily reminded of the disastrous US reign of King George II.

In seven short years we have gone from Le Monde’s 12 September 2001 headline saying, “We Are All Americans Today” to one of the world’s most reviled nations. Senator Obama spent a large part of his life as an expatriate, travelled the world as more than a ceremonial duty and understands what it will take to bring us back into a community of nations we used to lead on the strength of both our moral and military authority. We were counted on in the toughest of times to “do the right thing.”

As a Yank, I am often asked by colleagues in the UK press to make comparisons to you and former Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher. Aside from you both being more conservative/centrist than strict liberal or conservative and ruling with iron fists inside a velvet glove, the comparisons end rather abruptly. 

There is no way Baroness Thatcher would stoop to the levels of your current campaign. Yes, she did have to deal with controversial characters and could have handled Edward Heath better, but she mostly kept her own hands clean in the process.

Most here are at first confused then repulsed by your tactics and the question we keep asking, if Chancellor Alistair Darling were to contest the Labour party leadership of Gordon Brown at the Party conference, would he take such a personal level of attack against a member of his own party?

Of course not.

While you and your supporters high five and slap each other’s backs over the last six weeks, has anyone looked at the cost to your Democratic Party? While we are pleased to have a wealth of candidate riches, your inability to do simple maths and staying in this race at all costs means deeper and deeper divisions within the party.

The longer you stay fight on, the greater the chance those one million Obama voters on Tuesday defect across the aisle and vice versa. Why?

Because John McCain, warts and all, is no George W. Bush. This time around a vote for Senator McCain, really is a vote for Senator McCain.

Or is that your strategy all along? Racially divide the nation and make sure a crippled Obama wins the nomination, loses the general election and you come back on your shining stallion as the presumptive favourite in 2012 as not many 75-year olds run for re-election?

That would be even more dastardly. Do prove me wrong Senator. Do the right thing for the party and the nation.