Presidential candidates out to pick up chicks!

We comprise more than 52 percent of the population of the United States and polls show our vote is still up for grabs. That is why both political parties are out surfing for babes.

However, the old hot spots aren’t so hot anymore. You won’t find the politically unattached female at an abortion rally, the soccer field or even the schoolhouse door. In 2004, she’s outside the Pentagon looking for Mr. Right.

Don’t offer her champagne and caviar – she’s after a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy.

You can forget all the political rhetoric of sweet nothings – she’s heard them all too many times before.

While the soccer mom of 2000 may have been a bit scattered, running her brood to and fro, the security mom of 2004 has her priorities straight.

For the past four years, she’s been going steady with a guy who is not flashy or suave. He may not have been her first choice as a beau, but she has grown to respect him.

He talks kind of funny. At times, he gets his words mixed up, but when he tells her something, she doesn’t have to read between the lines. He gives it to her straight. She may not always like what he has to say, but she knows she can take it to the bank.

Sure, her guy has made mistakes, but who hasn’t? She knows the world is a lot safer without Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The former is now safely behind bars and the latter? As far as she knows, bin Laden is six feet under ground, blown to bits or still hiding in some hole, but as long as he stays in his hole, he is no longer a factor.

After 9-11, she fully expected more terrorist attacks to occur here. At first, she was afraid to fly or go to public events, but she gathered up her courage and got on with her life, thanks to his example.

She knows there is still a lot of room for improvement on security, but she prefers to look at how much progress has been made rather than dwelling on what is lacking.

No, her man is not the biggest guy on the block, but she remembers the courage he showed on Oct. 30, 2001 – just seven weeks after the attack on the World Trade Center – when he went to New York to throw out the first pitch for Game 3 of the World Series. When he emerged from the Yankees’ dugout, he looked so small and vulnerable, but so determined. That single act gave her a sense of pride.

She also takes pride in the progress that has been made toward bringing democracy to the people of Iraq.

Sure, the war has been costly, but what war isn’t? Wars, by their very nature, are messy and unpredictable. She knows that anyone who tries to tell her that he can predict how long one will take or how much it will cost is just whistling through his hat.

Now, there’s this new guy with big hair, a tan and a designer suit in her parlor trying to woo her. She plans to hear him out on at least three occasions before making up her mind, but she is wary.

She is not overly impressed with the chest full of medals he acquired in just three months as captain of a swiftboat in Vietnam. That’s because she knows he once pretended to throw those medals away in protest of the war he said couldn’t be won, while many of his former comrades were still over there fighting for their lives.

Last week, at New York University, this new suitor talked about the emerging nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran. Then, just four days later, at Temple University, he spoke of scraping our missile defense system because it “won’t yet work.” This left her confused.

She remembers how that technology was proved during the Gulf War when the Patriot missile was used to shoot down the scud missiles Saddam Hussein fired at Israel.

She was angry when she learned that, if a ballistic missile is fired at the United States, all we can do is watch it go “boom” because, as a U.S. senator, this man fought missile defense every step of the way. This is the same man who voted against most of the important weapons delivery systems in use today.

What would he use to defend her? A slingshot?