The irrepressible Ann Coulter pronounced the presidential election "a choice among hemlock, self-immolation or the traditional gun in the mouth" and proclaimed "now" to be "the time for patriotic Americans to review what went wrong and to start planning for 2012."

I'm all for that review and planning, but we must live in the present while working toward a better future and we need to choose the best viable alternative if there is one.

Of the three, hemlock (the choice of Socrates)is preferable. It's less painful than self-immolation and less messy than the gun in the mouth.

Likewise, in the presidential race, there is a preferable candidate.

With all due respect to Ann, John McCain IS significantly better than Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, especially for pro-lifers (like Ann and me).

After all, Barack favors infanticide. He's for driver's licenses and amnesty for illegal aliens, but he's against Fourteenth Amendment rights for babies born alive as a result of botched abortions.

Not even Hillary is THAT horrible.

Of course, Hillary wantpartial-birth abortion to be legal, so she's only marginally less horrible that Barack.

Compared to Barack and Hillary, McCain is great on the life issue.

To be sure, McCain is truthful when he describes himself as "an imperfect servant."

McCain's far from not perfect, but he's much better than his two potential Democrat rivals...and infinitely more likely to deal effectively with the terrorist threat and to appoint justices like Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito, Jr. that a Clinton (Bill appointed Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer) and Barack.

There IS an enormous difference in the voting record on life issues of McCain (who's been in Congress for 23+ years) and Hillary (7+years) and Barack (3+ years).

There's also no doubt that McCain courageously chose military service and fought for his country while Hillary and Barack did neither.

A magnifying glass is not needed to discern important differences among the three.

Ann complained in her latest article that "the mainstream media pick[ed] the Republican candidate for president."

It was not THAT simple, but the mainstream media certainly did prefer John McCain as the Republican nominee, as The New York Times endorsement of him before the Florida primary demonstrated.

Ann lamented: "We will never again get another Reagan because Reagan wouldn't run for office under the current campaign-finance regime."

That may well be true, we American voters still need to do the best we can do with what's available.

Ann: "Pro-lifers like to ask, 'How many Einsteins have we lost to abortion?' I ask: How many Reagans have we lost to campaign-finance reform?"

Excellent questions.

But, ironically, McCain is more likely to admit that McCain-Feingold was a bad compromise than Hillary or Barack, and to appoint the kind of justices who would strike down its unconstitutional parts.

Now that The New York Times has savaged HIM, McCain may reflect on the consequences of McCain-Feingold and prove not to be too old to learn.

Ann: "By prohibiting speech by anyone else, the campaign-finance laws have vastly magnified the power of the media -- which, by the way, are wholly exempt from speech restrictions under campaign-finance laws. The New York Times doesn't have to buy ad time to promote a politician; it just has to call McCain a 'maverick' 1 billion times a year."

Finally a media victim himself, McCain should realize that magnifying the power of the mainstream media was a BAD thing.

Amusing, articulate, ardent Ann isn't letting up on McCain: "It is because of campaign-finance laws like McCain-Feingold that big men don't run for office anymore. Little men do. And John McCain is the head homunculus."

Politics is the art of the possible and there is no perfect candidate, however.