Choice of Hillary would be clunker

The News Virginian
Published: June 11, 2008

Vanquished but never silent, Hillary Clinton distorts a punch line, amid sulking, pleading to Barack Obama: “Take me as VP, please.” Acquiescence would leave Obama as Henny Youngman, minus the laughs and still with no takers for his mate.
We are told by the shrews who compose much of Hillary’s dwindling contingent of supporters that she, somehow, would be a prudent choice for vice president. This is only true if prudence is defined by an antonym. Hillary, the argument goes, brings 18 million voters, but she brings more pain, which principally takes two forms, one wearing a pant suit and the other sporting a country-boy grin over jutting chin and beneath white hair.
Pairing up with Hillary Clinton is a good idea only if Obama has extra eyes to flank his back and oval never has been his shape. If Hillary is to be believed in her assertions that sexism — rather than presumption – felled her candidacy, then for Obama, the decision about whether to select her as running mate, if he has not made it already, might be a test of whether he will wear the pants in his campaign or look for his place in the kitchen.
Envisioning Hillary in a corner office on Pennsylvania Avenue, saw in hand marking Obama’s legs for cutting while the First Louse trolls the halls for interns, makes for an entertaining daydream. But would America, escaping the era of Bush and so close to doing the same with Clinton, vote for it? Comedy is funny until it becomes reality.
Whether it is mere campaign artifice, change has been Obama’s mantra. Hillary represents reversion. Obama has cast himself more successfully than any candidate since Reagan as one capable of transcending the Beltway’s traditional political mores, one beholden to ideals and vision and other such soft, fuzzy stuff. Hillary, who is repulsed by the combination of needles and thread, has sewn herself into the system’s fabric so thoroughly that she has become it.
Obama’s campaign fatigued in the last two months of the Democratic nomination race, partly because of his associations with sundry characters such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and terrorist turned university professor William Ayers and partly because of assaults from his party opponent. Turning that foe, who spent six months proclaiming that she would be “the stronger president,” into a running mate would draw life from Obama’s attempts to revive his campaign to its original vigor.
Moreover, it would reduce Obama to the role of sideshow for a couple whose political life has been reduced to mere spectacle. Hillary lands in combat zones of her own imagination, and Bill rekindles memories of the delusion. Both seethe with indignation as America endeavors to push them into the celebrity backwoods.
The decision before Obama will be his first of import as a presidential candidate. Previous travelers to the White House frequently have chosen running mates the way some old codgers select cars, favoring safe and reliable over flashy sets of wheels. George H.W. Bush, Al Gore and even Dick Cheney in 2000 were Buicks and Chevys. Hillary is a DeLorean, an overpriced attention-grabber whose well of political capital is about to run dry.