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This years Presidential election is the most important in two decades. Choose your candidate with care. The future of your child is in his hands.

The Presidential election will be coming up in November. It will be the most important election of the last two decades. Do you know how you will vote? There are hard decisions to make. What are the most important questions to ask yourself to help you make the best decision possible?

George Stephanopoulos has come up with important questions to ask yourself but it’s up to you to dig deep and find the answers that are most important to you… I believe the answers to those questions will help you choose the president you want for the next four years. I have not decided who I will vote for at this time but I think these questions will give me the answers I have been searching for.

  • Start with your gut feeling.
  • Sit down and think about what is most important to you;
  • National health care or national security?
  • Global warming or the makeup of the Supreme Court?
  • What do you prize most in a leader? Empathy, decisiveness, or intelligence? Candor or competence?

Imagine you are President:

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What would be your top priority? Who would you turn to for advice? What principle would you stand up for even if it put your Presidency at risk?

How you size up your candidates should flow from how you answer these questions.

Use the Godfather (Godmother) test. What that means is pick a candidate as if your child’s life depended on it. Liking a candidate is not enough. The decisions made by the next President will determine if your child will have to fight in wars, how dependant they will be on foreign oil, and if Medicare and Social Security will be there when they need it. Vote for the candidate who has the competence and character to guide your child, and the country.

Talk to your friends and family; you will be surprised at the questions they will raise for you to think about.

During debates focus on what the candidates say and do. Situation Room, debates offer glimpse of how candidates perform when everything’s on the line. Watch how they handle the pressure. Are they thinking on their feet or reciting canned talking points? Do they recover from a gaffe with grace, or pounce on an opponent’s mistake with out seeming too mean spirited?

Wit and showmanship are important. They feed into what political scholar Richard Seustadt considered the most essential power-”the power to persuade.”

Think hard before disqualifying a candidate for being a flip-flopper. Flip-flopping can be the most devastating criticism-and deservedly so if candidate shifts with the political tide, But history is full of Presidents who changed their minds. The Louisiana Purchase was the kind of power-grab that went against the grain of Thomas Jefferson’s deepest principles, but he came to see it as a wise investment in America’s future. Abe Lincoln promised the South that he wouldn’t abolish slavery, but thank goodness-he changed his mind.

Remember your vote counts. The 2000 election was settled by the U.S. Supreme Court when the official count showed 537 votes in Florida separated Bush from Gore- a difference of less then one-tenth of one percent of the state’s electorate.