Fantasy? Or Science Fiction?

[jeff_duntemann]

"Hilary? Hey, John McCain here. How's it going? Yes. Understood. I read the news. Look, I'll get to the point: Do you still want to be President? I think I can help get you there. It's unorthodox, but hear me out.

"Your party is in trouble. Once the media decided to anoint Obama as

Comments

Fantasy? Or Science Fiction?

[anonymous]

Or nihilism?

--Aki

[samwinolj]

Not a good idea--the shock would fill every stroke and heart attack ward in the country with neocons and dinosaur liberals...

...on the other hand...

[jrittenhouse]

Ya know, I was thinking this morning that she's more likely to get a VP offer from McCain than Obama, and she might just take it. Power is power is power, and the old coot's sure to drop over soon.

[crenelle]

Mrs Obama doesn't want Hillary on the ticket, so it'll be interesting to see if it happens anyway. None of the pundits think she'd be a plus on an Obama-led campaign. Frankly I think the pundits are more worried about Bill than Hillary, and that her campaign faltered around Super Tuesday because the campaign was way off message, and it was way off message because the folks running the campaign weren't very good, and Bill wasn't being statesman-like. Poking Bill is like thwacking a hornets nest with a stick, the results seem predictably bad.

[chris_gerrib]

It would almost be worth it just to see Fox News sputter... /grin/

Seriously, Clinton might take the offer if extended, but I don't see McCain being radical enough to do it. I guess that makes it reality-based enough for the science fiction classification.

I do tend to agree with the commenters upstream - the cardiac wards in this country would suddenly overflow should this happen.

[jeff_duntemann]

The cardiac wards would indeed overflow--and we'd probably lose 80% of the editorial staff at the WSJ--but having seen the science-fictional actuality of a junior Senator prying the nomination out of Hilary Clinton's experienced hands, well, anything's possible. (On the other hand, seeing all the water molecules in a pot on the stove move upward at the same time is possible...)

[etfb]

The one thing I don't get is: why are people so convinced that experience is a good thing? Quite apart from the fact that Obama has plenty of experience building consensus and getting things done (so much so that this is beginning to sound like the flip-flop John Kerry accusations all over again, ie made up by Fox to keep people worried) there's just not a lot of evidence that having experience is all that useful or necessary. Consider the last person who had experience as president: George the First, who had eight years as VP when he started as President. How much did it help him?

[samwinolj]

A fair amount, I think. Look at the coalition he put together to crowbar Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, as opposed to the total hash Jr. has made of our foreign relations, for example.

War hero, successful businessman, Director of the CIA, Congressman, ambassador to the UN, envoy to China--eight years as Veep was probably the least interesting thing on Old Man Bush's resume.

I speak as someone who voted against him, twice, but if I could somehow swap him for his son, I'd do it in a heartbeat.