While reading Andrew Criado's column ("Democratic presidential hopefuls need some real ideas to revive limping party," Sept. 18), I couldn't help but be amused by his attempt to tear down the credibility of the Democratic presidential candidates while simultaneously propping up Bush's track record. Although I agree that the Democratic field leaves much to be desired, I would rather see any of them in office in place of the present administration.

The points that he made in defense of the Bush administration were weak at best. Of course the top 50 percent of wage earners pay 96 percent of taxes when the median salary in the country is just below $30,000. What he doesn't mention is that, according to data collected in 1998, those same 50 percent hold 99.95 percent of the wealth in the country as well, meaning that they already weren't carrying their proportional share of the tax load before Bush's upper class tax cuts.

And as for the point of our rushing to war with Iraq, I would think that a Bush supporter would welcome that evaluation over the alternative that we actually had a well thought out plan that has resulted in more American deaths since the end of combat than during it.

Add to these his bold-faced lying about the Iraq's imminent threat to us to lead us into war, his bungling of international diplomacy issues, his criminally poor record on environmental issues, his all-talk-no-action educational policies, and his record deficit spending ($87 billion dollars for Iraq and a tax cut?), and you come up with the most short-sighted administration in modern history.

I would like to know how anyone our age feels about him 20 years from now when we're baking from global warming and paying 20 percent interest on our mortgages.

The bottom line is that if the Democrats ran a dog on their ticket, he'd get my vote over Bush.