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I was listening to the post-Super Tuesday analysis on CNN on my ride home from school yesterday, and the big buzz was about how exciting this is to not have the democratic and republican nominees selected (or anywhere close) after nearly half the nation had their say. Most pundits are talking rather excitedly about “brokered conventions” and how good this is for the political process.

I wish I could agree.

Not that I’m against close races or spirited campaigns. Like any sports fan, I love a good fight that goes down to the final seconds of the game.

What bothers me, I’m afraid, is that the four (or six, if you want to include Huckabee and Paul) hardly stand for anything different, sans Barak Obama.

And the problem with Barak is that his presentation of taking America to unchartered ground in the next decade is absolutely believable–if we were not engulfed in a nasty, nasty war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon-to-be elsewhere.

I feel like we’re on the verge of doing the world’s biggest sweep-it-under-the-carpet clean up, like the past seven years haven’t really happened at all. Let’s move on, folks, and focus on the good, the future, the children.

After all the rhetoric and the campaign promises of a brighter tomorrow, whoever gets into office is inheriting a most challenging, all-consuming problem in how to bring our troops home from Iraq.

I believe that McCain doesn’t want to do it.

I believe Hilary doesn’t know how to do it.

I believe Barak can’t do it.

What good is competition if the people battling for the top spot continue to step around the problems they will inherit and instead talk about how wonderful life is going to be without war?

The media are to blame just as much, though. We are so caught up in the meanness of the republican candidates and the softer side of the democratic rivals that we’ve somehow managed to forget that we have to first address our problems before we can start holding hands and break out into choruses of Kumbaya around the campfire.

I’m not going to lie. I can’t help but be mesmerized by Barak’s words and vision. Between Obama, Clinton, and McCain, Barak is the only one that I think has a chance of really changing the direction of America.

But you can’t change direction until you address our needs today. Driving off into the sunset has no romance to it at all when what remains behind are the lives of thousands of men and women who did what we asked them to do: put their lives on the line and protect our country.