Sen. John McCain has proven his dedication to country with his time, his talents, his fortitude, his body and his blood. Sen. Barack Obama, who has been a community organizer, would “change” it.

To what?

From the time he began his campaign his rhetoric has been forced to more centrist to score points with an unwitting public.

The question “What happens if McCain dies in office” cuts both directions. I trust Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s instincts, if not the breadth or depth of her experience, more so than I do a Harvard-trained attorney and his choice of a vice presidential candidate, Sen. Joe Biden. Obama’s first major decision as presidential candidate was to choose Biden. If that does not give liberals, Democrats and other socialists pause, it calls into question his ability to arrive at a sound decision.

Obama/Biden are carefully crafted and acted parts, except when Biden is on his own. In contrast, what we observe in the McCain/Palin Camp is substance, the result of personal experience and action. McCain/Palin, or just take Palin by herself, has more executive experience than both combined; community organizer or politician is not executive experience; squadron commander, and governor, are executive experience.

What qualifies Obama to be president? That he speaks the English language well? That he can deliver a good speech from a teleprompter? That he went to Columbia and Harvard and was president of Harvard Law Review? That he was a community organizer? That he sat for eight years in the Illinois Senate and only the last year of that tenure did he propose any legislation? That the only legislation he proposed was stripped from others by his mentor, the Majority Leader of the Illinois Senate, and given to him? That he voted “present” in the Illinois legislature over 100 times to avoid confronting a choice? That he supported legislation that would allow the post live-birth killing of any baby that was earlier targeted for abortion? That he beat Hillary Clinton? That he wrote two books?

Most Marine corporals have more substantive qualifications and experience: they can speak in unmistakable terms and without a teleprompter; they know the Uniform Code of Military Justice; they organize, lead and fight the nation’s enemies; they kill the nation’s enemies, yes — but not innocent babies; most of them know Clinton as the woman who claimed to duck bullets on the tarmac in Bosnia, and laugh; and their service to their country would fill more than two books and it would be signed with their blood, sweat and tears — and Obama wants to be their commander-in-chief?

Compare Obama’s experience to one who joined the PTA to improve her children’s school; was mayor of her town for four years; was on the state’s energy resources commission for two years and cleaned it up; was elected governor of her state, bucking the corrupt Republican machine; and, is cleaning up while running the state’s government. That is the kind of change that middle America is looking for in government — not Obama ‘This is the greatest country in the world’ who wants to ‘totally change it’ Obama.

Compare Obama’s record to one who went to the Naval Academy and graduated near the bottom of his class, then went through Naval flight training, flew combat missions, was shot down, severely injured, tortured for years and whose body was broken to the point that he caved under pressure to admit things he didn’t do but refused to break faith with fellow prisoners by accepting favored treatment. McCain was a squadron ccommander of one of the Navy’s largest squadrons — executive and command experience that neither Obama nor Biden have. His involvement in politics began as Navy liaison, after retirement was elected to the House, later to the Senate and has experience at crafting legislation, reaching compromise, leading reconciliation efforts with Vietnam, staunchly opposing torture of POWs and working to reduce or eliminate unnecessary and improper federal government spending.

How about the change Obama promises? Yes, one can see and hear “change” with every speech he delivers; “change” from the one he gives to the people in rural Pennsylvania who ‘cling to their guns, Bibles and religion,’ to the other that he delivers to San Francisco elites who cling to their money, godlessness and socialist utopian ideology.

Bob Pappas is a retired colonel of the United States Marine Corps.