I don’t know about you, but after watching the Republican National Convention last week, I’m seeking some Arabic language tapes in the event John Kerry becomes our next president.

While it was a great show, much of what transpired at Madison Square Garden was disturbing. I particularly had difficulty sleeping Wednesday night. Republicrat Sen. Zell Miller from Georgia, the keynote speaker, appeared to have had a nervous breakdown on national television that continued well into the wee hours of the night, long after he left the podium.

With that being the case, I was somewhat surprised the next morning at the reaction the speech received from my regular e-mail gang that comments on everything from UN conspiracies to strip us all of our guns, to alien visitations and the prospects this season for the West Virginia University Mountaineer football team – mostly Mountaineer football prospects, which are wonderful, by the way (Who needs Miami and Virginia Tech?)

&uot;We have a new Patrick Henry,&uot; one of them blared in all capital letters followed by a string of exclamation points. The others agreed. Once again, I’ve misjudged the feelings of the electorate — big surprise there.

I bit my tongue for a while but finally responded that while Miller certainly rocked the house, I believed he needed to be institutionalized.

I’m sure that comes as no surprise from someone like me, someone who’s no fan of President Bush.

Sure, it would be much more enjoyable to hoist a brew with W than it would Kerry, but since it’s highly unlikely that the president is going to show up on my doorstep any time soon with a six pack of cold ones, I’m afraid I’ll be forced to base my choice for president on other criteria.

In my view, regardless of the outcome, the president rushed us into an unnecessary war with Iraq that has left about a thousand U.S. soldiers dead and thousands more wounded so far, as well as served as an Al-Qaeda recruiting video.

Mr. Bush’s economy has been kept afloat by the powerful economic steroids of tax cuts, low interest rates, and massive government spending on a level that makes FDR’s New Deal look fiscally conservative by comparison. Despite these anabolic injections, the economy is floundering under the rosiest of scenarios. Now that these anabolic injections are in short supply, it scares me to think what a second term would hold.

Be all that as it may, I’m no fan of Mr. Kerry either. I think he was among the weakest of the field of Democratic contenders and if he loses, the party will get exactly what it deserves. His campaign has apparently adopted the playbooks of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, and is flawlessly executing them. It’s painful to watch him.

It reminds me of the Virginia Senate race in 1994 when a beleaguered Chuck Robb was running for re-election amid charged of cavorting with cocaine users and massages from beauty queens in hotel rooms. Robb’s popularity was so low he would have had a tough time winning against a communist candidate. But Virginia Republicans searched under every rock in the state and managed to find the only candidate who could lose to Robb – Oliver North.

All the guys in my e-mail group are going for Bush except my friend Larry, our pseudo leader. He’s self-employed in the computer business and has the time to get things rolling.

&uot;A vote for the lesser of two evils,&uot; Larry told the group, &uot;Is still a vote for evil.&uot;

Larry’s voting Libertarian. I admire a man of principals.

On the strength of his bounce, the president is reportedly ahead of Kerry by double digits in some polls. If it gets close again, don’t be surprised if a group calling itself &uot;Suicide Car Bomb Veterans For Truth&uot; comes out with a television commercial claiming that Kerry was one of the Sept. 11 hijackers but because he is a girlyman, parachuted out before the plane hit Pentagon.

Ridiculous, perhaps, but I bet Zell Miller would buy it.

Who’s the Libertarian candidate, anyway?

Andy Prutsok is editor and publisher of the News-Herald and a regular News-Herald columnist. He can be reached at 934-9611, or at andy.prutsok@suffolknewsherald.com.