Barack Obama's got to be spending some time thinking who he'll pick as a running mate. I have a hard-to-explain gut feeling that despite all the articles that says it won't be, it may well be Hillary Clinton. But it might not be and he's certainly considering others at this moment.
A very likely prospect would be Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio. Brown has experience, especially with his opposition to NAFTA and he's pretty militant about Universal Health Care. He's a good campaigner and he's quite popular in his home state, which looks to be a key swing state in the coming election. Anyway, that's a logical, sane thought I had. Here's one of lesser sanity…
Back in '72, advertising consultants counselled Richard M. Nixon that as much as possible, his campaign buttons, posters and bumper stickers should say, "Re-elect the President." The advisors felt that "Nixon" was a bad name for the product. "Nix" had a negative connotation to it.
Richard Milhouse presumably pointed out to them that that badly-named product had won the presidency…but he also liked the idea that he was "The President" so he went along with their thinking. An awful lot of Nixon advertising omitted or downplayed the name, "Nixon."
So I'm wondering if anyone in the Obama campaign is fretting over the following concern, should they decide that the gentleman from Ohio should be on the ticket. They want to downplay the whole issue of race in this campaign. Are they going to be concerned if so many bumper stickers say, "Obama-Brown"?