Oh-Oh... it's O'Biden...

Well, it's over. The secret is out.  It's Obama and O'Biden, as some minor linguists have gushed.  When news arrives at 3 a.m., that's understandable.  That's usually around  the week-end moment that the White House prefers to ooze  out bad news reports to a sleeping nation.   Not that the time made that much difference.  Many of the folks the Bush crowd appealed to in 2000 and again in 2004 dozed through most of the campaigns anyway, only to finally wake up a couple of years later to regret it.

       Now that Biden will be trying harder to strengthen the ticket, it has forced the GOP flame throwers to spend their days poring over the military archives to check the Delaware senator's name, rank and serial number.  Alas, they won't find anything as damning as, say, Kerry's Purple Heart.   As a young man, Biden chose  instead to place himself in harm's way by getting himself elected to the Senate.

       Think of it: the two guys at the top of the Democratic ticket have no military experience, as opposed to... well, you know where this is going.

         Of course, the rules of nasty engagement have changed since Bush-Cheney managed to duck out from military service for personal reasons or something less pressing on their time. They were then celebrated as the perfect warriors against our enemies, elevating their credentials above two Democrats who served honorably in the pre-Swift Boat days. 

          Among those who now want to set the record straight  on Obama-Biden is Bill Sammon, a former Plain Dealer reporter who is now a  political reporter for the right-wing Moonie Washington Times.  Sammon immediately cast a shadow on the Democratic duo with a column on the Fox website that insisted that some mysterious conversation between Bush and Biden never took place.  Sammon "documented" his report by quoting as his authority a "Bush confidante".  Of course.   He concluded gleefully that  "Biden's embellishments could provide easy fodder for GOP."  This is worth mentioning only because you'll be hearing a lot of insider  "confidante" stuff as the campaigns move on.     

         Now to the conventions:  As anyone who has attended any of these road spectaculars knows, much of the time is spent shopping at the better boutiques in the neighborhood.   (Bush was right: the most important response to serious matters is to go shopping.)  When John Glenn was hustled into a New York City hotel room by reporters in 1976 to explain his mysterious disappearance from the convention while Jimmy Carter pondered the choice of a running mate, Glenn easily explained it.  He had gone off to buy some shirts.   No scoop.

        Jim Rhodes played tag with conventions, coming later after reports that he might not come at all.   "They should all stay home and mail in their votes," the governor blustered before conning the national media that he would   arrange a  Reagan-Ford deal at the top of the ticket.

        I suspect that more than one deal - , broken, imagined or confirmed - will keep the  TV analysts quite busy this week.  

       On the other  hand, will there be much notice given to the fact that more Americans were forced to give up their homes in the past several months than the residents of Baghdad after five years of devastation?