The Breakthrough

You have to give Barack Obama credit for building suspense around his vice-presidential pick; the editors at every political blog are spending today obsessively monitoring their CNN news alerts for the first whiff of a creditable name. The downer is that his pick will almost certainly be a regular old white dude of the sort we’re all perfectly accustomed to seeing getting sworn in on the steps of the Supreme Court, the better to take the perceived “edge” off Obama; it’s just kind of a shame that all the names that seem to be in the air belong to guys who are so hard to get excited about. And it’s not like Obama really needs to pick someone who won’t outshine him. I don’t know if I’m the first person to observe this, but the guy is pretty charismatic; he could stand to have a running mate who would ALSO bring some electricity to the ticket without showing him up. So is it too late for me to make a suggestion? How about Mary J. Blige? She’s over age thirty-five. She’s American-born (as far as I know). And she could grant the rights for the campaign to put out a new single — “No More Drama” rewritten as “Vote Obama”! And at the convention, Obama could say in his acceptance speech that he doesn’t want any hateration — we already know he doesn’t! I offer this advice to the campaign completely free of charge. (And thanks to Kim for her contributions to this genius idea.)