MAILBAG:

Considering his profession, Sen. John McCain seems a decent man. Most people in charge can and will display a temper from time to time. There are too many built-in safeguards and therefore a minimal chance McCain will push the nuclear button and obliterate everything.

More important is his seeming lack of concern about the fact that the cost of gas has doubled and that more than 13,000 American kids have been killed or maimed over the course of the last seven years.

Since securing the GOP nomination, he has talked extensively about our economy, which is definitely in the tank, and about people who need to get a second or third job, if necessary, to pay for the home they shouldn’t have purchased in the first place.

That, to me, is a man out of touch. Can a Democrat do any better? A more reasonable question would be, can a Democrat do any worse than what we’ve had? Well, maybe Hillary could.

In any case, a president, strong or not, cannot accomplish anything without a compliant Congress. Our current president had congressional compliance — occasionally reluctantly — but never more than token resistance, and he and Congress have dumped the country into a moral and economic abyss from which it may take decades to recover.

For those reasons alone the GOP should forfeit a leadership role, both in Congress and as commander-in-chief.

ALAN REMINGTON

Newport Beach