The Column

Obama '08

And Chuck Hagel for VP

If Barack Obama's campaign is half as dynamic and forward-thinking as it claims to be, he'll pick Republican senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska to be his running mate.

Wait. Maybe we should get some other stuff out of the way first.

Yes, Obama's nomination is without question one of the defining moments in this country's history. Five years ago, I was skeptical that I would see a black president in my lifetime, and if you'd told me that in just five years the Democratic nominee would be a black man with the middle name Hussein, I would have laughed in your face.

Obama's nomination alone speaks to the power of his own message—those two silly little words he bandies about: Hope and Change.

As trite as those words may come across when plastered on campaign signs, they now truly do mean something. No one—and I mean no one—is more cynical about the American political process than me. Following the election of 2004 when we sent that dumb cow back to the White House for another term, I felt like I had just watched a guy try to open a jar of pickles by sawing his arm off at the shoulder: It was so absurd, so nonsensical, so a repugnant in its sheer freewheeling stupidity. For me, Obama does not represent a messianic figure sent to fulfill the American Ideal. He simply represents the guy who will twist the lid off the pickle jar—or at the very least bang the edge against the counter to try to loosen it—rather than resorting to the hacksaw. This is Hope.

He is not the perfect candidate, but he is candid enough to admit he is not the perfect candidate, and what this country needs is not someone who will go to coal-mining burghs in West Virginia and beat-up factory towns in Ohio and affect a down-home accent and wink and smirk and claim they understand exactly what these peoples lives are like. We need someone who favors solutions over ideology and candor over games and distractions; someone who can admit mistakes, and more importantly, who can adapt. This is Change.

Those who doubt Obama need only look at what he's done in this primary to understand how creative and brilliant he had to be in order to upset Hillary Clinton. She is the wife of the last Democratic president, a wildly popular figure in his party; she had all the big-money donors and infrastructure on her side. Towards the end of the campaign she was boasting about how she won all the "big" states. This does not indicate her wild popularity as much as it does the Clintons' control over the Democratic infrastructure in states where retail politics are not as effective. You can't campaign in California the way you can in Iowa. These were the states Clinton should have won, and Obama's team knew it.

So what did they do? They paid attention to the states candidates don't usually care about, and in the process won big and amassed an unbeatable delegate lead. While Clinton tapped huge Democratic donors, Obama re-invented the wheel with small-donation campaign fund-raising. And when Clinton lashed out at him, when she flailed wildly, he remained calm. When scandal broke and disaster loomed, as it did with Jeremiah Wright, Obama met it head on. When the opportunity for easy pander arose, as it did with the gas tax holiday, Obama resisted while Clinton bit into it like a ravenous dog tossed a ribeye.

Am I the only one who sees the behavior, attitudes and abilities of a pretty decent president in all this?

But enough with our kissy-kissy-Obama-happy-rainbow fun time. I'm done slurping this guy. McCain is waiting, and this time I actually want to win a fucking election for once.

I know we're all pretty much screwed for the immediate future, but I've got a brand new nephew named Jaxson, not to mention between 7 and 13 illegitimate children of my own, for whom I want to leave this world better off than the way I found it. Energy, Economics, Oil, War, Health Care—there is shit that needs to get done, people.

Having said that, let's deconstruct Obama's first step toward the White House: Picking a running mate.

There really is only one wrong choice, and that is Hillary Clinton. Far from being a dream ticket, this would be an absolute nightmare. Obama would have to contend with not one but two people who think they should be running the show. An Obama-Clinton-Clinton threesome would be more appealing on Cinemax than on the Democratic ticket. She would not bring a single state into the Democratic column that Obama can't win himself, and furthermore her connection to the white working class has been dramatically oversold by a lazy media. White men will vote for the Republican candidate because that's what they always do and white women who previously supported Hillary will not suddenly pull the lever for the guy who's promising more Supreme Court Justices of the Bush variety.

Hillary brings nothing but baggage and undermines the whole narrative of Obama's campaign. It's hard to run as a "change" candidate against an establishment candidate and then turn around and say, "Well, but some establishment's cool." Republicans, meanwhile, would get a two-for-one with an Obama-Clinton punching bag. Jesus, I can hear Sean Hannity's erection growing at just the prospect.

So who does that leave? One of the benefits of the 2006 Democratic Renaissance is that it's left a bevy of good picks for the 2008 nominee. If you want red-meat Dems from swing states, you got Virginia Senator Jim Webb, an ex-Marine with a son in Iraq; Ed Rendell or Ted Strickland, ex-Hillary supporters who govern Pennsylvania and Ohio (go Buckeyes), respectively. Former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn has also been tossed around as a possibility in this vein.

You got your ex-presidential candidates, most notably John Edwards, although he'll seem stale after '04; Bill Richardson of New Mexico would make a thoughtful, experienced second-in-command (although I've always thought he looks like he should have a mustard stain on his tie); and my personal favorite, the salty Joe Biden, who recently called a statement by President Bush "bullshit" (we need a politician who will publicly call bullshit; although frankly, calling Bush's words "bullshit" is like calling a collapsing bridge a "traffic mishap").

If you're still scared that female voters will stay home, you got plenty of women from red and swing states with the balls to not fall in line with the Hillary-represents-the-sisterhood faction, including Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano.

A female pick would show guts but probably deliver very little in the fall. With the ex-candidates list, I think Richardson's the only definitively smart choice that will also produce votes amongst important blocs (namely Latinos and the swing state of New Mexico). Then again, if white guys are your thing (and thank God for me, that for some people they indeed are ), Jim Webb and Ted Strickland could both deliver important states and garner support from those working-class white men everyone's creaming themselves about.

As I said at the top, however, I have a different pick: Republican Senator Chuck Hagel. Why? Because it's the game-changer. Let's break it down:

1) Post-partisanship

Obama has spoken quite a bit about moving beyond Republican-Democrat divides, but as his critics fairly point out, in his short time in the Senate he has voted a consistent Democratic line and not done as much in the way of bridge-building as his rhetoric implies. Picking a Republican to join him on the ticket would be almost as historic as his own candidacy. It would actually be a legitimate step toward this murky goal of "uniting the country." You want your white men? Hagel's a white man last time I checked, and if you think Hannity, O'Reilly and Limbaugh et al are going to have an easy time defining him as a John Kerry or Al Gore white guy (which is to say, an Ivy League liberal elitist) than you don't know Hagel.

2) Chuck Hagel is One Bad Mothefucker

Although he operates far more under-the-radar than John McCain, Hagel is the actual maverick Republican that everyone's always saying McCain is. Read Hagel's interview with TIME or check out his book. While the rest of his party blathers idiotically about flag pins and "appeasement," Hagel has challenged his fellow elephants again and again while also identifying a number of the problems they simply refuse to address. He rails against the hazards of borrowed money and a growing trade gap, the dangers of the country's decaying infrastructure, our government's inability to address poverty, and most importantly he has been a consistent critic of the Iraq war and the Bush administration's obfuscation regarding that conflict.

Of course, he is still a Republican, and in that capacity he could simply say, "That's right. When I disagree with Barack, I'll let him know, but he will be the president, and I'll be part of the team." Within his administration, Obama could use Hagel primarily in foreign policy. The office of the vice-president had the door blown off the hinges by Dick Cheney, and it's unlikely the next guy (or gal) will want to fix that. Using Hagel as a senior statesman when dealing with idiot or criminal regimes, from Moscow to Tehran, could fulfill that expanded role.

3) Military Bragging Rights

John McCain is running a textbook Republican campaign, which basically consists of calling the Democratic candidate a pussy as many times as possible before Election Day. Amazingly, however, McCain is playing the military card. In a recent statement McCain basically called Obama a bitch for not having served in the military yet trying to increase veteran benefits by supporting Jim Webb's new GI Bill.

My question is this: Does John McCain think we can't remember anything that hasn't happened in the last news cycle? Does he think we can't recall who got us into this war? I have the same amount of combat experience as the entire Bush administration's chickenhawk coalition combined.

Hagel as VP can put an end to this nonsense (obviously, as could Webb). Hagel served in Vietnam, picked up a Purple Heart and a few other medals, and actually translated his experience in that war into a reservation to use military force for uncertain purposes in vague, untenable situations. A Republican veteran like Hagel would make McCain look awfully silly ranting about how only war veterans know how to win wars (even if non-veterans apparently know so well how to start them).

But who knows if Hagel would accept the rival party's offer, and this is, after all, just my humble little idea. It's not like I think the Obama campaign should hire me as an advisor, although, my schedule is mostly free through November and like Obama, I am often called a "transformative figure" (although this is more in reference to a rather grotesque birthmark on my upper thigh).

At any rate, I know I said I was done, but just to slurp the guy one last time: Congrats, Barack. You once said that you like shaking hands in a crowd and seeing little old white ladies next to big burly black guys next to Latina girls—all crammed together, their hands intertwining. You said, "It's like I'm just the excuse."

Here's to a pretty good excuse.