As a Republican, two totally personal experiences contributed to my change of heart, and horses, when it came to both my party and President Obama.

At a large Republican gathering in Washington where Newt Gingrich was the keynote speaker, I was at a table with a more moderate Republican delegation from Maryland.

Gingrich played demagogue to the hilt, delivering nothing less than a rabble-rousing tirade, denigrating Nancy Pelosi in the most vitriolic terms, in a speech short on any substance and long on venomous personal attacks.

As a Republican, I left the building in disgust, feeling that I had experienced something akin to an extreme right wing rally. It truly reminded me of nothing so much as a Nuremberg rally.

The second event might well be considered a corollary. During George W. Bush Administration, I had been nominated by the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee to become Assistant Secretary of the US Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition.

After a long series of interviews and background checks the White House called me to tell me that President Bush had selected me from a long list of contenders.

My elation, however, was short lived.

Shortly afterwards I was sitting alone with Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense) in his Pentagon Office.

He wanted to discuss how I was going to handle Navy acquisitions – ships, submarines, carriers – the whole works.

During our chat he was totally diverted by his TV. His boss, Donald Rumsfeld, was on C-Span, in the midst of a grilling by the Senate about the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

I have never ever condoned or supported the use of torture with prisoners, whatever their complexion.

Torture is not only illegal, it is immoral, unethical, and totally ineffective.

As a fully trained experienced interrogator I know that there are ways of making prisoners or foreign agents compliant without lifting a finger to harm them.

I realized as I left Wolfowitz's office that I could never work for him or Rumsfeld. I had also decided that the Chief of Naval Operations and I would never see eye to eye about the administrations ship building plans, reducing as they did, our nuclear Submarine force to about 34 hulls – a disastrous strategic decision in my opinion.

The White House and I parted company, much to the chagrin of many of my supporters for the position, as well as many in the defense industrial base community.

The Republicans who had nominated me were old school – gracious people who conducted House and Senate business with a sense of civility and mutual respect – debated with vigor and conviction on the floor of the House or Senate but afterwards were still friends with their political opponents.

They were Republicans who would never permit the Party to degenerate to the level of Gingrich invective that ensued during the period of the Clinton impeachment, managed by a Speaker who was a master of hypocrisy, seeking to destroy a President for sexual dalliances while having a secret affair in Washington.

Gingrich set the stage for the rise of the extreme right wing and the tea party that could destroy the Republican Party if they are not careful. Today hard faced Speaker Boehner shows zero respect even at an event like the State of the Union Address – poker faced and lacking in even the basic civilities.

So, finally, what about Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan? Why did I not give them a chance? Was there redemption in my mind for the past follies and misdemeanors of their predecessors?

I found not on close examination.

I found Romney to be a fraud – a man who represented himself as an industrialist, a job creator par excellence, when in fact he was a Mergers and Acquisition person who had made a pile buying and selling companies, often putting many employees on the street in the name of rationalization in order to roll over a company at a profit.

I have zero problems with making a buck – I am a total capitalist and free market supporter, BUT I do not like misrepresentation and political chicanery.

Romney lacked substance. His international experience and exposure were appalling. In the UK he showed during the Olympics that he was an arch blunderer, the tabloids characterizing him as "Twit Romney", a totally irreverent comment for a Presidential candidate but the underlying truth was there – he committed one faux pas after another.

Romney's belief in the "truths" of the Book of Mormon also gave me pause.

Paul Ryan frightened me, and still does. He serves as Chairman of the House Finance Committee and believes that he is a financial expert, even though his experience and credentials are virtually non existent.

He advocates what I term "rightwing finance" at the expense of the only group in the United States that really matters in economic terms – the massive middle class on which the total economic edifice of our country rests.

Recovery depends on middle class purchasing power. Increase it and boost jobs, profits and investment for the next round of innovations. Ryan simply does not understand this.

Obama

Has Barack Obama completely fulfilled my expectations? Absolutely not.

He is a wonderful speaker, but short on action and follow-through: witness his great speech in Cairo early on, and recently in Israel. Soaring rhetoric, but to date, little progress.

His energy programs, or lack thereof, have been disappointing.

That said, I still believe in his commitment, his compassion, his fine intellect, his energy and, most of all – his integrity.

He can become a great American President over the next three years and nine months if he has the courage of his convictions, and does not worry about political bogeymen like AIPAC and the like.

His passion in response to the gun control issue is symptomatic of his ability to garner enormous support. He is a natural leader.

Pray let him not be limited by political expediency.

Better to have tried and failed than never tried at all.