March 12, 2008--Really Ready On Day One

Here's the kind of experience I want in my Commander-in-Chief:

Someone who at age 29 parachuted behind enemy lines so that she could serve as a courier between allied and French resistance forces. Her two suitcases landed in a lake but she soon located her fiancé who had recently escaped from a German prison camp.

She then took command of 3,000 troops and they in turn were responsible for killing more than 1,000 German soldiers and capturing another 18,000.

Her unit then went on to interdict a rail line that supplied Nazi troops in Normandy. They did that 800 times during the month of June 1944, the month of D-Day; and, as if that weren't enough, her forces regularly attacked German truck and tank convoys.

She covered up her movements by carrying a case of cosmetics so she could pose as a traveling saleswoman.

At that time her name was Pearl Witherington. British by birth she grew up in France. Her nom de guerre was Pauline and her code name was, aptly, Wrestler.

If you ask me the kind of person I want in the White House answering the phone at 3:00 am, it's the Wrestler.

I just learned about Ms. Witherington because she died a couple of weeks ago at age 93. (See NY Times obit linked below.)

Our candidates, in the meantime, are behaving as if they are mud wrestlers.