by Charles Gordon
March 29, 2007

Every presidential candidate should be required to answer the following questions, but don’t count on it happening:

(1) If you were Harry Truman, would you have had the stomach and the mental toughness to do what he did in 1945 — unleashing the ultimate weapon on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which prevented a million or more American casualties from occurring)? Why or why not?

(2) Prove you’re not a panderer by naming at least one issue where your position differs from that of the majority of Americans and explain how you’re going to persuade the people that you’re right on that issue.

(3) If a known terrorist is captured and if we know for sure that he knows when and where the next horrific attack on innocent civilians will occur but is refusing to talk, is it right to do whatever it takes to make him talk and save lives? Yes or No.

(4) Have you ever told a lie in your life?

(5) Would George Washington or James Madison have agreed that pornography is in any way a constitutionally protected right to free speech or expression?

(6) Do you believe human activity plays a key role in global warming and if so, what do you plan on doing to cut your own generous use of energy?

(7) Over the years, anti-smoking literature from medical and other groups have routinely warned pregnant women that smoking can harm their “unborn child” even in the early stages of a pregnancy. Yet pro-choice rhetoric denies that what the woman is carrying is a child. Who’s right? The anti-smoking advocates or the pro-choice activists? Is it or is it not a child? Why or why not?

(8) Were the Iraqis right to kill Saddam Hussein? Would any government have been right to hang Adolf Hitler? Why or why not?

(9) What is your philosophy on the judiciary? Should they interpret the Constitution based on what its writers were trying to say or based on what we think it should say?

(10) When the rich get richer, do the poor get poorer? Why or why not?