Dear America,

I've decided to offer my services to the country as president.  I'm not running.  Frankly, I'm retired and I like it.  I'd rather sit out on my deck with a mint julep on summer evenings with my wife and watch the sun go down.  I'd rather come and go as I please without having to worry about someone taking a shot at me.  In fact, I got up five mornings a week and went somewhere to sit at a desk and work for decades before I retired, and I think I have paid my dues.  And why shouldn't I offer my services as president.  Everyone else seems to be doing so, but I have a qualification that none of the rest have: I don't want to do it, but if you want me to I will.  I have no ambition to be president, but the rest of the candidates do, and that's the problem.

Kamela Harris is intelligent.  She is tenacious to the point of being obnoxiously aggressive, which is the former prosecutor in her.  She looks good and smiles easily, but frankly, I never met a prosecutor that I either liked or trusted.  They just want to win, and right versus wrong never enters into their thinking.  Then, there's Bernie.

He's almost a comic character from Brooklyn with his accent and his tousled white hair.

And I like his politics--universal health care, free college for all, income equality--but he's got two things working against him: his position on guns and...he's old.  Mind you, if he could get someone's nomination I'd vote for him, but I worry that a lot of other people wouldn't because of the gun thing and...he's old.  Of course I'm old too, but not that old.

There's Kirsten Gillibrand, the attorney daughter of two attorneys.  There's something about her that is reminiscent of Hillary Clinton, and not in a good way.  For example, when she worked for a law firm that represented Phillip-Morris, she worked on the defense of the firm and its executives even though she didn't have to.  She wanted to.  And she opposed the Obama Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in 2008, which plan is credited with ending the economic crisis much sooner than it would have ended without it.  She did that because she was a "Blue Dog Democrat," which group was largely responsible, in league with Republicans, for preventing the "public option" from being included in the Affordable Care Act.  She claims to be more liberal now, but it's always hard for me to trust a habitual apostate.

As to the rest of them, Senator Klobuchar seems nice, and appropriately liberal, but she's more like a kindergarten teacher than a president.  And there is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, but he has very little political experience, though when I heard him interviewed he seemed to have some good, liberal ideas.  He's just too young.  Cory Booker is an unabashed grandstander, as he demonstrated during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.  Elizabeth Warren has always been pretty liberal, and I like that.  But Warren herself seems like a hysterical loudmouth rather than a progressive acolyte.  I don't think she can win, though if I have to vote for her as the Democrat running against Trump, I will...not gleefully, but I will.

And then there are all the others and the ones who will be coming forward in the next few months.  I don't know who the as yet unnamed candidates are, but for that matter, even though there names are of record I don't know who the other already-declared candidates are either.  They're like me: unknowns, and unfortunately, I think they are destined to stay that way.

So, here I am.  To paraphrase "Silent" Cal Coolidge, if nominated I will not run, because I don't really want to be president, but if elected, I will serve.  My main qualification is that offering myself up as president isn't an ambition being fulfilled.  I don't need to embellish my resume.  I am committed to serving, but if Michelle Obama throws her hat in the ring, I will gladly withdraw my name so as not to take votes away from her.

Your friend,

Mike