Thursday, September 4, 2008

A parable

It's the weekend before the Democratic Convention. Barack Obama has yet to announce his running mate, and the speculation is fierce. Is he going to select an experienced Washington hand like Indiana Senator Evan Bayh to smooth the gaps in his resume, or another fresh face like Kathleen Sebelius to complement the change message? It's Saturday morning before the convention. Obama supporters wake up and check their phones to see if they received a text message, and they indeed have. It reads:

Barack has chosen Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo as his Vice Presidential
running mate.

How do you think this scenario would play out? Republicans would denounce the pick as evidence that Obama is not serious about governing. They would label the ticket the least experienced in history. They would say that Fargo is not qualified to be president, and all of this would be entirely true and fair. The media would begin a feeding frenzy--what if Obama had just chosen Fargo because he met her once and developed a rapport? The media would find some questionable things in her past, since everyone has some questionable things in their past, and the Obama ticket would probably go down in flames.

The only difference as I see it between that situation and the one involving John McCain is that Fargo has eight years running a dynamic and diverse city, while Sarah Palin has about a year and a half running a state dominated by parochial interests. And Sacramento has a bit less people than Alaska. But let's take this in perspective: a complete WTF? is totally in order here.
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The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.