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So here’s the plan

Short term:  this week I finish up the first chapter of the book I’m writing, and start on the second.

Longer term:

Kerry / Edwards 2004

Edwards / Obama 2012

Obama / Bérubé 2020

-- well, why not?  we’re the same age, we both went to Columbia, and we were both skinny kids with funny names.  Well, he’s still skinny.  And sure, he gave a terrific keynote address to the Democratic National Convention and I didn’t.  And yeah, he’ll be a United States senator next year and I won’t.  And OK, he’s got extraordinary political talent, both form and substance, and I can’t pull 30 percent in the race for treasurer of the local book club.  But by 2020, you’ll see, America will be ready for its first African-American-Kenyan-Kansan-Hawaiian-French-Canadian-Irish ticket, and I’ll be ready. 

First, though, I gotta finish this chapter.

UPDATE:  No, really, I’m not that grandiose.  Not even in my dreams, and not even in my dreams about flying.  It’s just my way of saying I’d follow this guy into Gehenna.  Here’s what I said, in a more serious mode, over at Jeralyn Merritt’s place this evening (it’s 11 pm here even though the server reads it as 3 am Wednesday):  Obama’s red state/blue state riff had to be the highlight of the night. The rest of his speech was fine-- land of opportunity, Kerry will be tough, Marine from East Moline, all good-- but his deft two-minute deconstruction (we worship an awesome God in the blue states, and don’t like the feds snooping into our library books in the reds; we coach Little League in the blues and have gay friends in the reds-- I have to paraphrase from memory) blew me away, and I don’t think I’ve used the phrase “blew me away” since I was 17.

Posted by on 07/27 at 04:14 PM

  1. Obama is awesome. Can we nominate him instead? Can I hear an Obama/Clinton 2004 ticket? Edwards can be Attorney General. He has a nice smile.

    Posted by nicholas  on  07/27  at  07:35 PM

  2. Amen, brother!  As I was listening to Obama speak today, I was thinking back to your posts--was that last week? already?--on the need for a candidate we can *feel excited about*.  Well, having just spent the last ten or fifteen minutes reading the comments on the Obama-blog (it’s even a fun name, that you can do crazy things with like “Obama-blogging” and Baraking the vote, as some commenters pointed out), man people are just inspired by this guy.  Smart as can be, committed, a straight arrow, a personal story that people connect to.  And he can talk.

    Posted by David Morgen  on  07/27  at  07:52 PM

  3. Would you really want VP over the highly coveted position of “Minister of Culture and Beer”? The latter seems to be your true calling.

    Posted by  on  07/27  at  07:55 PM

  4. Plug this into realplayer to watch Obama speak. Great speech, BTW!

    rtsp://cspanrm.fplive.net/cspan/project/c04/c04_dnc072704_obama.rm

    Posted by  on  07/27  at  08:27 PM

  5. Sara, stop messing with me.  You know very well that I learned just this week that there is no position of Minister of Culture and Beer.  (I must have been thinking of Germany, with its deep respect for culture-- and beer.) You listen to David Morgen here-- he’s right, this is a candidate to get excited about.  Which no doubt explains why we’re talking about an obscure state senator as if he’d just won a handful of primaries and is knocking on the door of the White House.  He is, it appears, the real thing.

    And Nick, while we can’t have an Obama/Clinton ticket, we can damn well send these Oratory Boys around the country to remind everyone what real leaders should sound like.  Don’t line up Edwards for AG just yet-- you have to wait to hear him tonight.  Besides, I’m holding out for Lani Guinier for AG.

    Posted by  on  07/28  at  03:36 AM

  6. Nah.

    Obama/Obama ‘12.

    Ron Jr. gets the research money for cloning, and the rest follows naturally from there.

    Posted by  on  07/28  at  04:34 AM

  7. Now, now, you know that’s not the way it works-- no VP candidates are actually created in the cloning process.  But if you’re stumping for Obama / Five-Day Embryo in 2012 (or 2020, when the embryo would bump me off the ticket), that sounds fine by me.

    Posted by  on  07/28  at  05:21 AM

  8. Michael,

    Yeah I was putting him on a ticket soon, too.

    As for you own 2020 candidacy, your cause would be enhanced if in the intervening period we go to war with Eastasia and we will have always been at war with Eastasia and France is celebrated in the American press for its aid to us during the Revolution and in Afghanistan.

    Posted by  on  07/28  at  09:57 AM

  9. I say “blew me away” all the time, and Obama me away blew dude totally. What? Someone on a national stage ready to call “compassionate conservatism” exactly what it is: “willful ignorance”? (Okay, so that’s a little out of context with his actual sentence. There’s plenty of willful ignorance to spread around.) I have a vision of hundreds, nay, thousands of blue Little League coaches finally stepping up to the plate and showing how to knock some of those political balls lobbed by the Red Team clear out of the park. What a night. 

    Posted by sian  on  07/28  at  10:19 AM

  10. Speaking of Little League coaches-- don’t forget, Challenger League is a division of Little League (check out the family pix page of this site).  I’ve been working that beat for three years now.  And I have gay friends in the red states, too.

    Glenn, I hope we don’t have to go to war with Eastasia-- I was counting on President Kerry to establish French as the national language of the United States and to declare hockey the national pastime.  Yeah, that’s my ticket.

    Posted by  on  07/28  at  11:14 AM

  11. Smokin!, Michael, smokin’!

    I hope I live till 2020 to vote for you and Obama—will make every effort. 

    Posted by  on  07/28  at  02:05 PM

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