When I choose a lawyer, I choose a person who earned his stripes through hard work and intelligence and has a reputation for excellence rather than one who got where he is because of a family name and poppy’s friends.

When I choose a doctor, I choose a person who earned his slot in medical school rather than a “legacy student” who slipped in the back door because a parent preceded him.

When I vote for a candidate for president of the United States, I vote for a person with a good grasp of world and domestic issues, a person who seeks to broaden his knowledge by reading and listening to others and a person who is able to admit error when he makes a mistake rather than a Connecticut preppy who can make no mistakes and who pretends to be a good old boy in the south and a cowboy in the west.

On Nov. 2, we are choosing a person to be the most powerful leader in the world – not the senior class president.

We cannot afford four more years of hearing corny one-liners mocking our oldest allies followed by a phony “heheheh” and enduring a backslap meant to distract us from the incompetence of a gaggle of neoconservatives who stole the White House four years ago.

That’s why I’m voting for John Kerry for president. We need to restore expertise and credibility to the Oval Office.

Tony Nazar, Wilton