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Of the serious candidates for the office of President of the United States, Romney is clearly the less bad of the two. Only on thing stands betwseen him and the Oval Office - the willingness to take the fight to Obama.

As was so snarkily asked of George W. Bush, by no less a personage than Nancy Pelosi, Where are the jobs, Mr President? But so far nobody is asking Obama this question.

Follow that inquiry with, What about the price of gasoline, and now, increasingly, the price of electricity, Mr. President? Was it a good idea to cap off the production of electricity from coal? Of course, we have plentiful supplies of natural gas, and pretty cheap, as well, why is the installation of natural-gas burning power plants not being ramped up as swiftly as the installations can be built and put on-line? Why are there no incentives in place to take advantage of this relatively inexpensive source of motor vehicle fuel, by making much more of our passenger and trucking fleet capable of using this fuel source? What about building the infrastructure, fueling stations and retrofit systems to service existing vehicles?

There is a growing gap, that cannot ever be filled with various kinds of “green” energy, be it from sunlight, or wind power, or sprinkles of fairy dust. Get ahead of and fill this gap before it ever fully opens up, and stop wasting time, talent and treasure on what are crackpot schemes to somehow claim the “free” energy we only need to harness from the wind and sun.

There is a niche for these “renewable” energy sources, but they shall always be subject to the whims of climate and circumstance, and are not, never can be, a reliable source here on the surface of the earth.

Some 80 years ago, there were windmills on a large share of rural locations, both to pump water (primary function) and some few that drove a generator which charged up a series of Edison cell batteries, and provided a rudimentary source of electric power. But wind power proved unreliable then, and when electricity was finally made available to the vast majority of rural locations, the windmills were promptly abandoned. Some few rusty, twisted skeletons may still remain, testament to a means of extracting energy from nature that never proved any superiority to a steady flow of water or the conversion of the heat energy from burning of coal or fuel oil to widely distributed high-tension alternating current electricity.

There are so many ways to frame this coming campaign - let it by defined by the first person who can get in there to pose the questions, and give the answers the American public is so desperately waiting for.

A. Jobs and full employment, in like the 4% unemployment range among ALL able-bodied and willing citizens, only going to foreign sources when it is impossible to fill the work rosters with domestic talent.

B. Decent return on investment that prompts potential investors to put cash behind the ideas that expand and embellish the availability of every source of creative energy, unencumbered with excessive taxation and/or regulation.

C. Recognition that most of life is NOT the purview of government at ANY level to insist on some kind of oversight over the activities of the vast majority of people, and reverence for the sanctity of home, law and contractual obligations between individuals.

We do not ask much of most of the men who have served as President, only that they be decent men, and recognize their role is not to micromanage, but to give general direction and delegate power to those who may best administer that general vision that accentuates and preserves what is good about America.

The stewardship of the Oval Office is a duty of high calling, and ask yourself, who, of the persons now bidding for the job over the next four years, and all the decades that follow, best exemplifies that definition of “good steward”.