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The road ends in Indiana

For the first time, and most likely last, in my life, the nation has turned to Indiana to decide who will become the next president. The pressure is becoming unbearable on me and, frankly, I wish the primary were over.

Not only can I not watch an episode of The Simpsons or Jerry Springer without being bombarded by Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton pleading with me to vote for them, it’s gotten to the point where I can’t even go about my daily chores without being pressured to vote a certain way.

My mailbox is full of flyers encouraging me to vote for Hillary or Obama. But it’s gone way beyond that. Bill Clinton stopped me on the street the other day and offered to treat me to a night at the strip clubs if I’d write a column endorsing his wife. I passed.

I stopped in a local bar to get a drink and Hillary was there, buying everyone shots of Crown Royal. I left.

When I got off the bus one evening last week, Chelsea Clinton was standing there, saying she’d buy my wife and I dinner at O’Charley’s in Glendale if we declared allegiance to her mom. I politely told her no.

When I got home, Evan Bayh was outside my apartment building, offering to give me a manly back rub if I’d endorse Mrs. Clinton. I told him no and then called the cops.

I’m sorry, but I made up my mind months ago that Barack Obama is the best chance this nation has to bring America into the 21st century and lead us into a new era of greatness. While Clinton was a terrific first lady and is a good senator, I simply don’t trust her to bring us anything more than a repeat of the scandals, gridlock and unfulfilled promises that her husband gave us in the 1990s.

I admire John McCain for his service to our country, but all he wants to give us is four more years of depression, war and misery. We’ve had eight years of the government being run by people anxious to fulfill all the prophecies in the book of Revelations. We don’t need more of the same.

Any sympathy I might have had for Hillary was erased as soon as she began her scorched-earth policy of trying to destroy the Democratic Party because she was denied what she saw as her God-given right to reclaim the White House.

The only way she can get the nomination now is to do a reprise of Bush v. Gore and get the super delegates to overturn an election because she didn’t like the results.

But I’m not just against Clinton and McCain. I’m emphatically for Barack Obama because we not only need a president who can get results, we need a president who cares about the average person.

When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, he represented the same things Obama does now. Like Obama, Bill came from a lower-middle-class background, worked his way through school and had devoted his adult life to fighting for the disenfranchised.

But nearly two decades in and around Washington have turned the Clintons into everything they protested against in the 1960s: the insider politicians who feed at corporate troughs, scratch the backs of their fellow millionaires and then swoop into town at election time and tell us what pollsters tell them we want to hear.

As Obama has said many times, we’re insane if we keep electing the same people with the same ideas and expect different results. The Clintons have had their turn and it is time to move ahead. History will treat Bill Clinton’s presidency kindly, but both he and his wife are products of an era whose time has passed.

Despite her new, temporary residence in our state, the fact remains that Hillary Clinton doesn’t give a shit about you, me or any other poor person in Indiana. She represents the other side of the Bush coin: promise compassion and deliver oppression.

Commentators always talk about the intelligence of the American people. I don’t. We allowed Bush and Cheney to steal two elections and not one building was burned or one car overturned in protest. We’re about to sit by and let a Democrat try and steal a third election.

But we in Indiana, who in most cases express good judgment, have the chance to end the Clinton/Bush dynasty once and for all by giving Barack Obama a big primary win next Tuesday. I hope and pray we have the common sense to do so.