It could be the least experienced ticket in history. At The Plank, Isaac Chotiner and Noam Scheiber discuss the titillating possibility of Obama/Casey '08. This kind of speculation is of just the type I criticized at Berry -- the election becomes 'electrified' with 'excitement' not because anything truly gripping is going on but because something unusual might happen. Can we muster a collective effort to recognize that variety has no intrinsically interesting character? Particularly in an age when superficial diversity produced in a highly competetive distractions market is recognized as possessing the shortest of shelf lives?
Perhaps. Until then, we can revel in the karmic blowback involved in an Obama/Casey ticket, to wit: the endless ridicule heaped on the right's most ardently Christian second-string pols boomerangs back as people seriously consider betting all the marbles on the guy who beat Alan Keyes and the guy who beat Rick Santorum. Welcome to the big leagues! What a way to vault a leadership to power. Though Chotiner preemptively strikes this meme by praising Santorum as "hardworking" and "knowledgeable." Maybe postpartisanship really is among us, and what people really want in office are a couple of boys next door, fresh faces for some stale jobs.
This may terrify some, but I remember back to my praise of Fred Thompson as a guy who realized the President (and Veep for that matter) needn't be some superhuman. And if Obama convinces more people he'll attempt heroic deeds less often than McCain, that just may put him over the top. On that score, McCain, of course, will do his best to do Obama's job for him.
Obama is a Senator. He hasn't run anything big. He needs a running mate who has (as does McC, as would Clinton). He should be looking to a governor. Bredesen or Napolitano would do. Richardson, maybe, though he doesn't seem to have been all that good at it.
Posted by: dave.s. | March 29, 2008 at 11:29 AM