Pa says Mitt is the match for me, but Barack sure does talk pretty. They both promised me a big white house with a rose garden.

Out on the Tara verandah, I fanned myself sitting between these two beaux, like night and day. I'm not a classic Southern belle, but men seldom realized it when as caught by my charms as suitors Mitt and Barack were. Mitt is cut from a strong steely mold of American manhood. Barack is free-flowing and creative, the latest edition of cool. At least he thinks so. They both dress their parts well every day.

You'd think they'd never seen green like my eyes before, as emerald green as Ireland. That was all they agreed on. Then they argued over who would do a better job of taking me to the barbecue. I told them if I heard that word "job" one more time, I was going inside the house. It shouldn't be a job or a chore to take me anywhere.

So here am I, frankly undecided in a true battleground state — as in an old Civil War state. I must say gentlemanly Ashley, Rhett and the Tarleton twins knew how to ride a horse and court a girl much better than this. But hey, they're gone with the wind and Scarlett's spirit survives in me. To tell the truth, both Mitt and Barack leave me lukewarm.

Pa says I'm ripe to catch a husband again — and my choice is right here in front of me, coming to call. It's a choice we all have to make at the end of the day, but I really have to get it right, because I'll live with this man morning, noon and night. He'll have the right to see me with less than my nightgown on.

I'll be the great lady for as far as you can ride all day if I marry Mitt. He gave Pa and me a Power Point presentation on his vast land holdings and his mega-wealth tucked away — yes, I did see those secret tax returns! Good thing I had my smelling salts. I'd never go hungry again, as Mitt's wife. I'd have a chocolate brown horse to dress up for the world. And I'd drive a couple of Cadillacs.

Mitt mentioned to Pa, not me, that he'd like me to have a family of five sons. As if I was nothing but a vessel and he the captain of my body! I thought times had changed since my day. When it comes to women in Mitt's world, all that's missing are the plantations, which gave antebellum women a domain of their own back then.

Come now to Barack's speeches and poetry — well, it's enough to make a girl mist up and reach for smelling salts again, in a good way. His life story is the stuff of Greek myth, Telemachus on a journey searching for his father. Barack can talk until the evening sun sets on a summer day over the red clay land. Land! He doesn't have any land, less than a quarter acre in a city I've never seen, Chicago. That city burned down in Scarlett's time, I'm told. Fiddlesticks! How does a man have the audacity to court me with a measley quarter of an acre of land? Who does he think he is?

What qualifications or experience does he have to be my husband? Slender is the word for the experience he brings to the table. Like Mitt, there's something dispassionate that wends its way through his character like a river.

This is how I'll make my choice. The time passes faster with Barack than Mitt, mainly because he has wit and irony. Ladies don't like men to be so square these days. There's no doubt Barack likes and understands women better than Mitt does, tied in with his own viewpoint as an African-American. People tell me I have a better chance of being first lady of the whole land, not just first lady of this slow drawlin' cotton county. Whipping the Yankees and Sheman's burning barnstorm are still things people talk about. Sure, I make a mighty pretty picture on the porch, the envy of every girl, but I am so done, so ready to bust out. I'll even go by train to Chicago, but I swear I'll never come back here again.

One thing I'll tell both Mitt and Barack: neither side really wins in a Civil — or a civil — war. Then I'll break the news:

Mitt is the kind of man used to being master of the house. So that's why my vote goes to Barack.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.