Cruiser, I'm an old fashioned liberal, but I'd vote for any qualified conservative over Bush.

I'm not much of a butt-sniffer of candidates. Bush seems to me very much the same public person as before he was elected. I wouldn't care to know the president personally, only as a consistent, principled public figure. It drives me crazy the way we look for character clues even after we have clear public records, but I suppose it's just more fun.
I wish you'd reconsider your feelings about the death penalty. The jury system just isn't accurate. It isn't designed to be perfectly accurate--it's designed to prevent the government from rigging it--a good conservative value at work, and we should be willing to pay for it. If there were some separate standard of absolute proof, I'd be fine with the death penalty, as you put it.

I was against the war until it happened, but once there, it would be horrible not to go the distance, I think. An awful waste of lives and effort.