I had just been getting over my distaste for President Bush. At the beginning of his term, I vehemently opposed nearly everything he did. The campaign seemed shady, the election was more than shady, and of course his vocabulary did nothing for his image in my eyes.

Then, like the rest of the nation, I cuddled up to him after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. My confidence began to waver only after Afghanistan was nearly gone, and Bush began to mention hopping on over to Iraq and taking care of them while we were in the neighborhood.

I waited for a reason.

Weapons? Maybe.

Terrorists? Maybe.

Nothing had me convinced.

During his State of the Union address, however, Bush had me leaping back on the bandwagon: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." It was all I needed to know. Like most Americans, there are a few things that freak me out more than the word "nuclear" in conjunction with reality. I would have done a few push-ups and started walking toward Iraq if I thought I could have been any help at that time.

But of course that was the idea. Now we find the statement was unfounded. It was their fault, his fault, her fault, whatever. And Bush finally steps up to say that he's sure sorry he said that. Apparently, it was all his bad. I have no doubt he and his administration thought this bit of shameless honesty would have been just fantastic for his approval ratings. But it's too late. That one half-truth has long since served its purpose. Lives have been lost and the world has changed; there's nothing shameless in that.

However, my biggest issue is not with Bush. It is in the light of all the aforementioned, when Bush's approval ratings are declining, that I don't know who wants to step up and take his place. Why is that? It's barely more than a year before the next election and I have not heard of one shining candidate that would give Bush a run for his money.

With almost 300 million people in this country, how is it possible that Bush might repeat his candidacy?

It's possible because no one wants the job. Of course, there are people who want to be the most powerful person in the world, to be responsible for the lives of so many, and to go down in history. The problem is no one who is truly decent and deserving of such a role wants to ruin his or her life by two other aspects of the presidency.

We are a snooping, merciless nation and any man or woman who respects their loved ones more than his or her own personal success will do anything to protect them from us. Colin Powell won't run because his wife said, "No." That's the kind of man I want in office. The irony in that is too depressing for elaboration.

As the American people, we have backed ourselves into this corner. We have filled the lives of our president and his family with a kind of pressure that is totally unrelated to politics.

Not long ago I saw a man looking at the cover of a tabloid and saying to his wife, "Ugh, Chelsea Clinton is just so ugly." What has Chelsea Clinton ever done to give that man the right to judge her appearance? Because her father chose (and her mother seems to want to choose again) to thrust her into the public eye. No one noticed her existence before.

Of course, judging eyes is a small example of the intrusion the American public makes upon the first family. I won't even get into the country's opinion of the first twins.

By now it is no secret the personal lives of some of our nation's greatest presidents were less than moral or upstanding. Franklin Roosevelt managed to pull us out of the Great Depression without sleeping with his wife, Eleanor, once. Not the man I'd want to marry, but I'd take him in a financial crisis any day. We were so upset Clinton appeared to be that same type of husband, we picked our next president for his family values. Unfortunately, family values have not had top billing in U.S. politics since he's been here.

My point isn't as simple and obvious as "we need to leave our president's personal lives alone." Of course, there are advantages to having an honest husband and wife and father and mother in the White House.

What we have done is created a paradoxical situation in which we insist upon scrutinizing the first family for morality, which drives away all of the truly moral family men and women who wish to protect those they love.

Of course, no one is perfect; but there are very, very good, wise, capable people within our population. If a person is 100-percent moral in family values, he or she would not run for the presidency. If a person is 100-percent capable of making the right decisions as the president, he or she cannot have a family intruding upon his or her priorities. We need to make a decision to accept our candidates for who they are and what they believe in. Or we need to make the decision to accept a candidate who is a little from column A and a little from column B.

As Americans, we are so used to having our Happy Meal and eating it too.

In the case of picking out our leader, however, we need to stop our multitasking long enough to make our expectations realistic, and choose the person who best fulfills them.

Natalie Burg is an English senior. Reach her at burgnata@msu.edu.