Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton (Again!)

By Si Dunn

They both want to serve, and the current predictions are, they each will reach the Democratic Convention with no clear advantage over the other.

So here's the proposal: Let them both serve. It will take both of them to help straighten out the enormous messes that the current Administration will leave behind.

By convention time, whoever has garnered the most delegates should be the candidate for President, and the other one should be willing to run for Vice President. No angry arguments, no bitter backroom deals. Drop the balloons; start the grand speeches.

Glass ceilings will be shattered, greatly minimizing race and gender as future issues in American politics. Two very good political camps will be melded into one unstoppable November steamroller. And both candidates will end up in the White House in positions of leadership, power and influence.

With such an agreement in place and known, Senators Clinton and Obama could stop the negative bombing runs on each other. They could focus harder on giving us their visions for our future and let us simply compare them and decide.

Individually, they are very vulnerable to savage attacks by Republican "swift boats." The GOP's "more of the same, only slightly different" message will not resonate with voters this fall. So the inevitable strategy will be to make endless torpedo runs:

"...And, when Obama was eight years old, he grew fascinated with the changing shapes of clouds and soon became a card-carrying member of the Weather Underground. "

"...And, when Hillary Rodham Clinton was six years old, one of her classmates punched her on the playground, and she cried and started espousing liberal causes. Do you really want a crybaby liberal as Commander in Chief?"

Together as running mates, however, Senators Clinton and Obama would be the Republicans' worst nightmare. The GOP swift boats would steam in and start blasting away at a wide array of targets (both Clinton and Obama do have plenty of baggage that reflects political radar signals). But the swift boats ultimately would sink themselves (and John McCain), because voters quickly would tire of the constant explosions of negativity and just tune out the strident yammerings.

Hope and change. Those are the two main messages that will resonate this fall. John McCain and the Republicans can't offer those visions this time. Together, however, Clinton and Obama can...no matter whose name is listed first on the ticket.

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Memo to Obama, Clinton and McCain: Shut Up (Again!) About Each Other Already

The political idiocy just never stops.

In the seemingly neverending--and endlessly stupid--game of campaign "Gotcha!", now we have Sen. Clinton accusing Sen. Obama of looking down his nose at weary middle-class voters. We have Sen. Obama responding by criticizing Sen. Clinton for voting for a bankruptcy bill backed by credit card companies. And we have Sen. McCain's campaign accusing Sen. Obama of being "elitist" and "condescending" and "out of touch" in his views.

Can someone kindly explain how any of this (and its accompanying mini-firestorm in the weekend news media) has helped any voter anywhere learn anything new and useful about any of the candidates and where they stand on any issue?

"Gotcha!" politics is utterly useless, except that it gives the news media a convenient excuse for avoiding more substantial reporting. And it is totally insulting to voters who want to give fair consideration to all candidates.

Indeed, the whole campaign process now is broken and needs to be scrapped and replaced with a long series of public and televised forums where the candidates have to explain themselves and their hopes and proposals for America--without any mention or implied criticism of other candidates in the race.

American voters are smart enough to pick their leaders without the "help" of campaigns that try constantly to undermine their opponents or make them look stupid.

It's the campaigns and their candidates--every one of them--that end up looking absurd.

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