• OBAMA’S VICE PRESIDENT

As the coming weeks unfold, more ink will be spilt and talking heads will twitch on our screens, with expert opinion on the choice of Vice President for the political upstart making an unprecedented run at the White House. Obama has probably already heard every reason why choosing Hillary Clinton would bring nothing, other than discord, to his Presidency, and the coming days will provide the media’s experts ample time to bore voters with same refrain. The emotional bias against Hillary continues unabated.

Obama’s closest advisors, including his wife, will also join the chorus singing "anybody-but-Hillary". The only ones cheering for an Obama-Clinton ticket are the vast numbers of Hillary’s now despondent supporters. The rest are repeating tired comments such as her representing the antithesis of change and old style backroom politics. This simplistic analysis suggests that politics in America has now changed under Obama because he would never stoop to such retro and underhanded strategy. Somehow this also implies that the hundreds of millions he will have spent to get into the White House, were contributed by hordes of poor people dutifully mailing in their ten dollar donations. It also suggests that they were organized to do so or enticed by altruistic seekers of social and political change rather than calculating backroom powerbrokers manipulating a well oiled political machine.

While Obama’s ego settles into the event of his win, he should waste little time making his decision. That determination should favor Hillary Clinton, by far the most broadly supported, hardest working, and probably most knowledgeable addition to his ticket currently available to him. The wide support she has been able to attract from women voters alone should provide him enough substance for adding her to the ticket. It is also the most direct route to unifying the Democratic Party in one move. No other candidate could do that for him. Such a ticket would make McCain’s prospects of becoming the next President evaporate overnight.

One suspects, however, that the Vice Presidential position is not in Hillary’s best interest, and if she has not already turned it down she probably will. Her future looks brighter as an effective Senator, with her newly minted and invigorated public persona providing impetus to her legislative efforts. That will do, of course, until she gets a nod for the Supreme Court, … from Obama.