OKAY, HERE'S AN IMPERTINENT PREDICTION...

(This is, after all, a blog.) I'll be shocked if Hillary Clinton isn't our president from 2008-2016. Okay, I'll at least be sorta surprised. I'll also be surprised if the country -- nay the whole damn world -- isn't better off in 2016 than it is now or two years from now. Hence the job of being Clinton's right-hand man (yes, man) is a very plum gig. Whoever it is will be on his mark and all set for an eventual run at the Oval.

Three candidates come to mind:

1. Bill Richardson. Plusses? He's safer for Hillary's ego than just about anybody else ... He's got a Clinton-friendly track record ... He's qualified to be president right now ... He has a background in energy policy and geopolitics, issues #1 and 1-A on any so-called Leader-of-the-Free-World's agenda ... He's Hispanic ... New Mexico's tiny in electoral college terms, but razor thin margins there could conceivably make a big difference; in 2004, it went to Bush by a little over 6,000 votes. Drawbacks? The "Who?!" factor (I wouldn't be surprised if there are those in the Hillary camp who are hoping his ill-fated '08 run will raise his profile just enough to make him a viable veep alternative. Heck, in the back of his mind, he may even harbor such designs himself, especially if he's game for another push at the presidency in 2016, when he's, gulp, 68.) ... Some skeleto-ethical issues.

2. Mark Warner. Plusses? It's a bit of a misnomer to call him a Blue Dog Dem -- the guy's from northern Virginia, which is a far cry from everywhere else in the state -- but he has earned his rep as a uniter, not a divider. As governor, he played well all across the commonwealth, even in the rural southwestern corner of the state, and he was able to use that goodwill to get his hand-picked successor elected. All of that could help him deliver a state that seems ever-more in play, what with its recent unseating of the previously popular Republican senator George "I Meant No Offense By that Seemingly Racist Epithet...Actually I Didn't Even Know What It Meant" Allen. Drawbacks? "Who?!" ... Might be too ambitious for Hillary's taste ... Says he wants to spend more time with his family than a presidential campaign would allow ... Though he has some executive experience, he's probably a little too wet behind the ears.

3. Barack Obama. Plusses? Got splash? Check ... Got a human interest story? Check ... Got several demographic bases covered? Check (interracial), check (Christian), check (young), check (immigrant) ... Got good bone structure and facial symmetry? Check ... Got a "No" vote on Iraq? Check ... Got global (i.e., worldly, which is an attribute we as a nation need desperately) ethos? Check. Drawbacks? Budding worst-kept-secret rivalry with Miss Hillary herself ... Like Warner, he's an ambitious neophyte ... Doesn't deliver a measurable electoral-college shift.

My money's on Richardson, though he's going to have to prove himself under the microscope of the race for the nomination. Nobody thinks he'll win it -- except for maybe him. I have a hunch, whether this is consciously intended/articulated by anyone or not, that if he gets vetted out okay in the primary process (the scandals turn out to be much ado about nothing, he shows some moxy, gravitas, and charisma, etc...) he just delivers too much in the general election for Clinton to ignore. My working thesis is that HC's greatest attribute is her pragmatism and Richardson, sans any remains-to-be-seen disqualifying factor, will likely be the hands-down pragmatic choice.

Okay, so there you have it. Clinton-Richardson '08. (If I'm right, do I win something?)

And now, as promised...

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A BONUS MUSING!

I'm trained as a poet and I have an interest in social justice, so it should come as no surprise that I'm a sucker for poetic justice. Right?

And if you're in for poetic justice, then there's only one ticket worth seeing in '08. Now, I'll admit you're more likely to find Osama bin Laden (or, say, WMDs in Iraq) than you are to see either of these two run for something in '08 -- much less run together. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen.

I'll lead with the easy one: Al Gore. He's been right about global warming from the beginning. He was right about Iraq from the beginning (he endorsed Dean in '04, over his friend and running mate Joe Lieberman, solely because of Dean's then-solitary stance against the war). Turns out he was right to sigh loudly and roll his eyes in exasperation at the prospect of a George W. Bush presidency. He's smart, he has the resume, and at the end of the day, a whole lot of reasonable folks would look at the presidency as something that has been rightfully his since 2000. And most important, he comes out looking pretty good when those same folks ask themselves what the world would look like now if that's how things had actually shaken down.

And now for an imaginative leap. Who, like Gore, was right about Iraq from the beginning? Who, like Gore, has had a career of prominent public service, most notably in more behind-the-scenes roles of ever-increasing responsibility? Who, like Gore, has a wide-ranging portfolio that delivers military, diplomatic, and Washington-Insider areas of expertise? Who has a track record of bipartisan centrism? Who delivers a great deal of demographic bang for the buck? Last-not-least: Who, like Gore, simultaneously enabled and was burned by the Bush administration -- and therefore has a score to settle with both the Bushies and, more importantly, with history?

There is exactly one person who fits that particular description, and that person is Colin Powell.

I'm not saying Gore-Powell '08 will ever happen. It won't. I am saying such a ticket would be a mortal lock in the general election. I am also saying that there probably aren't two people in the world who have such perfectly unique, perfectly complementary, perfectly perfect qualifications to help us extricate ourselves from a gigantic mess that they both -- directly and indirectly -- helped bring to fruition.

And that, my dears, is the quintessence of poetic justice, Beitelman-style. Retreads, yes...but retreads with a shot at redemption. Heck, ain't that what this whole dang country was founded on to begin with...?!

OUR MAGGIE THATCHER?

She's all in. (PS...So's Bill Richardson. Wait...who?*) I had planned a post on my It'll-Never-Happen-But-Wouldn't-It-Be-Cool-If-It-Did '08 dream ticket, but the blogosphere -- being the turn-on-a-dime beast that it is -- demands I switch gears. Just like the Marines. That's me: First to go, last to know. So without further ado, here (in chronological order) is what I thought when I read of Sen. Clinton's announcement:

1. Duh.

2. Phew! [This surprised me, this sense of relief. It was a pleasant surprise, I must admit. I suspect my relief is the result of her unmistakable, unwavering competence. When the likes of Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney have gone on record with measured/reluctant props, you know she's a formidable and polished politico in her own right. Simply put, she can do the job, and that's more than I can confidently say for any other Dem who's already (or soon-to-be) official: Edwards, Obama, Vilsack, Richardson, etc.]

3. George Stephanopoulos. Actually not so much little Georgie himself but a scene from his book, All Too Human, in which he describes a fairly bizarre cuddly moment between the Clintons on the 1992 campaign trail. Something about soon-to-be president Clinton nursing a perennially sore throat in a hotel somewhere and one-day senator Clinton spoon-feeding her man a tried-and-true homemade remedy -- if memory serves, it was a concoction of hot water, honey, and lemon. Something soothing at any rate. So soothing, in fact, that Mr. Clinton, tucked safely in the arms of his missus, cooed her name in babyspeak: "Hee-a-ree."

That story stuck with me for two reasons. First off, in the context of all that went before and all that came after, it's a frighteningly symbolic moment for the perpetual trainwreck that is the Clinton marriage. Hard to pull your eyes away, even though you like to tell yourself you want to.

More important, though, that moment is also symbolic of the role Mrs Clinton served time and again for Mr Clinton. That of Fixer. Whenever the going got really rough in his political career -- and, boy, did it -- Bill had a command-and-control team of one: Hee-a-ree. Say what you want about her, and folks from either side of the aisle will want to say a lot of things about her over the next eighteen months. In crunchtime, Hillary Clinton has always been money. Well, Senator, have we got a crunch for you!

4. Charles Krauthammer. I'll just come right out and say it: ol' Chuck gives me the willies. His vibe is way too Severus Snape for my taste, and I don't think I'm alone on that. At any rate, a few years back he wrote a WaPo column in which he compared Bill Clinton to Ronald Reagan using management guru Jim Collins's fox-versus-hedgehog paradigm. Foxes are good but not great at a lot of things (hence the title of Collins's book, Good to Great), whereas hedgehogs do one thing relentlessly well and thereby achieve greatness. Krauthammer's thesis was this: Clinton --> Fox as Reagan --> Hedgehog.

Now, in the true spirit of confession, I must expurgate a sin. After reading said column, I zipped off an e-mail to CK...agreeing with him. (Ugh. Aren't you supposed to feel better after confession? Alas, I fear there's not enough time in the infinite Cosmos for me to say all the Hail Marys I'd have to say...) I did not believe then, nor do I believe now, that Reagan was a great president. But for the grace of Nancy's astrologer (and the o-so-convenient crash of the Soviet economy) he goes down as a spit-shined version of George W. At the time of Krauthammer's column, however, a lot of my fellow Clinton Democrats were disappointed that our guy lived and died in mundane increments, that for all his promise, he left behind precious little evidence that he'd been there, done that.

Suffice it to say, after eight years of hedgehogging our way to an ersatz, after-the-fact New World (Dis)Order, I'd trade our current kingdom for a fox or two any day. Here's the job description: Desperately seeking exceedingly smart person. Must know a little bit about a lot of things and thereby be able to hold delegates accountable for making and implementing good policy. Extensive breadth and depth of experience essential. No time to train.

Seems to me, Hee-a-ree's on that very short list.

Stay tuned next week: I'll predict the Democratic duo that'll actually run...and win...and -- as a special bonus! -- I'll present the dream ticket I promised. And then we'll get off the political kick for a while.

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* Just for the record, I'm one of the three people outside of Abuquerque and the DC Beltway who actually do (does?...where the hell are Strunk & White when you need 'em?) know who Bill Richardson is. Unfortunately for him, those numbers haven't changed even though he just announced he was running for the most powerful elected office in the world. Here's a word for you, Guillermito: Timing. It's everything. Unless, of course, you're angling for another stint at the Energy department.

BARACK: A GAME OF WHAT-IFS

What if there was no such thing as overexposure?

What if his first name sounded nothing at all like a country-cum-clusterf--k we created in the Middle East.....and his last name didn't conjure images of a megalomaniacal jihadist with bad kidneys.....and his middle name was something other than, say, Hussein? (Seriously, though: Barack Hussein Obama?! Somebody's pulling our leg here. Otherwise he's got to be some kind of spy or something, right? But for who? Kofi Annan? Dick Cheney?)

What if Democrats weren't so self-loathing as to convince themselves that, oh, twenty years (Hillary) to an entire adult lifetime (Al) in the Big Leagues -- learning the hard way -- was somehow a disadvantage they had to overcome? (It's like they're a football team with a really solid running game and four downs to score from the one-yard-line when somebody on the sidelines says, "I don't know -- maybe we should run the reverse here.")

What if we couldn't afford a single rookie mistake -- like the Bay of Pigs...or like doing your best Mr. Rogers impersonation on national TV during an energy crisis...or like handing over the keys of a massive proposal for healthcare reform to an unelected and polarizing spouse? (Hey, didn't we just see her...)

What if we hadn't just hired -- and then re-hired -- a guy who was, from the get-go, hopelessly overmatched and underqualified?

What if twelve straight years of the Peter Principle is at least four more than the world can handle?

What if he wasn't handsome?

What if it was always and forever the fall of 1960?

What if the myth of JFK's youthful vigor had never bored itself into the American psyche and then, courtesy Dr Oswald (et al), undergone the Peter Pan treatment to make sure it was stunted there forever? (So much more manageable to lug it to the polling place that way.)

What if we'd never heard of "A Place Called Hope," never felt those tingly Horatio-Alger goosebumps at the first few chords of Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" during the '93 inauguration, and thus never got it into our heads that the only president we young libs could ever elect was some impossible diamond-in-the-rough genius?

What if some liberals weren't more interested in the generic litmus test of "Can we elect a [fill-in-the-blank] president?" than the selfless task of finding someone who can hit the ground running in a gigantic, multifarious crisis? (FYI, guys: Elections after really shitty presidents count. A lot. Ask Abe Lincoln and FDR.)

What if, all things being equal, it wasn't absolutely crucial that we get this one right?

What if we didn't know -- for a fact -- that there are people, in both parties, of either gender and various ethnicities, who have more experience (foreign and domestic), more insight, and far greater credentials?

What if it was 2016?

What if you picked the right guy or gal and then figured out how to get her or him elected -- not the other way around?

What if pragmatism wasn't so f--ing underrated and yet so very necessary right here, right now?

What if there was a legitimate reason why voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, and Michigan should vote Obama-'08? (Granted, the alliterative effect is way cool and, sadly, its shelf-life is tick-tick-ticking.)

But then: What if he is the Real Deal?

Last-not-least: What if the only way we'd know that for sure is if he chose not to run this time around?

YOU CAN'T SPELL 'ABSURD' WITHOUT UA

Harken, if you will, to the Indian summer of October 1999. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was gearing up to take its place as the third largest population center in the state, as it does each Saturday the Crimson Tide plays in Bryant-Denny Stadium. Eighty-four thousand sunsplashed folks lined up to watch Alabama play SEC foe LSU. Among them was a group of graduate students and a visiting professor -- a sweet little poet from Slovenia named Tomaž Šalamun -- who had never been to an American football game.

Now, Slovenia is an interesting place. Set in the netherworld between eastern and western Europe and once part of the former Yugoslavia, it is no stranger to political upheaval. It is a place where poets have been jailed -- yes, for writing poems -- as Šalamun was for five days in 1964. But it's small. Like the mythical Freedonia in the Marx brothers' Duck Soup, there's something absurd in how small it is. Slightly larger than the state of New Jersey. Just over two million citizens--about four Bryant-Dennys full.

"Slovenes," Šalamun once told the American poet Robert Hass, "never break rules. You should see them at traffic lights. It says stop, they stop. It says go, they go."

Maybe for precisely that reason, Šalamun's poetry breaks rules. It can be absurd. Delightfully inchoate. It is, at its best, an ecstatic babel of tongues. This, from his Four Questions of Melancholy:

Jonah

how does the sun set?
like snow
what color is the sea?
large
Jonah are you salty?
I’m salty
Jonah are you a flag?
I’m a flag
the fireflies rest now

what are stones like?
green
how do little dogs play?
like flowers
Jonah are you a fish?
I’m a fish
Jonah are you a sea urchin?
I’m a sea urchin
listen to the flow

Jonah is the roe running through the woods
Jonah is the mountain breathing
Jonah is all the houses
have you ever heard such a rainbow?
what is the dew like?
are you asleep?

I think of Tomaž Šalamun for two reasons now. First, because in 1999, upon seeing his first American college football game, he had one of his many charming epiphanies, the kind that gave him an undeniable halo of Otherness. Part Chance the gardener, part benevolent space alien. In this instance, the poet's epiphany had to do with the virtue of play-fighting our civil wars once a week -- as opposed to letting our various sectional, factional, ethnic, and economic rivalries ferment for years and then fighting them out for real. I have to wonder if that's an epiphany he'd stand by today.

The second reason I think of Tomaž Šalamun at this particular time, in this particular place -- early 2007, central Alabama -- requires a bit of a Šalamun-esque associative leap, so bear with me.

The University of Alabama has just agreed to pay a man $32 million -- fully one-tenth of the Slovene GDP -- to run its storied-but-stagnant football program. The man in question is Nick Saban, who as minor coincidence would have it, 1) once coached at LSU and 2) has hereditary roots in Croatia, which is just a deep post-pattern away from Slovenia.

LSU. Tomaž Šalamun. Alabama. The Balkans. Absurdism.

Let me say that I have no qualms with absurdity. There's value in things not making sense all the time. No less a paragon of reason than the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara, former Defense secretary under Kennedy and Johnson and architect of what was until recently America's most absurd war, has gone on record as saying rationality will not save us. I agree.

There's the good kind of absurdity, though -- "Jonah, are you a sea urchin? / I'm a sea urchin" -- and then there's Vietnam.

So which kind of absurdity is it for a state university to guarantee a football coach $4 million a year for eight years? (That's 20x what the governor makes, for those of you scoring at home.)

Hmm.

Listening to Saban's introductory press conference in Tuscaloosa was like listening to Tony Robbins, Dr. Phil, and Norman Schwarzkopf all rolled into one.

"To the fans and supporters, the boosters, everybody that is here that loves this program, loves Alabama football, I want everybody to know that we need a lot of positive energy for everybody to make a difference in how we go about what we try to do to have the best football team in the Southeastern Conference, the best football program in the Southeastern Conference. I think everybody should take the attitude that we're working to be a champion, that we want to be a champion in everything that we do. Every choice, every decision, everything that we do every day, we want to be a champion. Everyone take ownership for what they need to do relative to their role, whatever it is, whether it's being a fan, a booster, be a good one. Any kind of supporter that you are for this team, everyone take ownership that we support each other so we can have the best possible football program that Alabama has ever had."

It's impossible to deny that football-- the ra-ra-sis-boom-bah variety and/or the hand-to-hand combat version -- plays a significant role in shaping American hearts and minds. Especially those of its young boys and men. I, for one, cannot seem to shake a deep-seated emotional investment in my Pop Warner days as a wishbone quarterback -- games won, games lost; what-might-have-beens; where-are-they-nows. All that's to say that I, like a lot of American men, have had my values and my psyche shaped in no small part by sport.

But Saban and his ilk -- (Would you be surprised to learn that the football coach at the University of Iowa is within spitting distance of $3 million per year?) -- are selling a lot more than male socialization or the promise of Glory Days. They are, in fact, selling nothing less than the antidote -- at least a synthetic version of it -- to human suffering.

Selflessness.

Judith Herman writes in her seminal book on violence, terror, and abuse -- Trauma and Recovery -- about the successful treatment and reintegration of "shell-shock" victims in WWI:

"[M]en of unquestioned bravery could succumb to overwhelming fear and...the most effective motivation to overcome that fear was something stronger than patriotism, abstract principles, or hatred of the enemy. It was the love of soldiers for one another."

Whether we're huddled in a trench, waiting patiently at a stoplight in Ljublana, Slovenia, or seated thirty rows up at the twenty-yard line, we all want to think there's somebody out there counting on us. To listen to the new coach, folks in Alabama -- at least the half rooting for the Tide -- can rest assured: Nick Saban is just that someone. (Hooray!) But, alas, Coach, I still have a couple of pesky $32 million questions:

1. Are you aware that the selflessness you're selling is ersatz?
2. Is it my fault or yours if I buy it?

Here's hoping the answers to such questions prove as fruitfully elusive as they do to the ones you might find in a Tomaž Šalamun poem. ("have you ever heard such a rainbow? / what is the dew like? / are you asleep?") The straight ahead, logical responses don't seem nearly as fun.

DICK CLARK IS ALIVE...

...and not so well, huh.

For starters, let me acknowledge that we're supposed to laud the-man-the-myth-the-icon for cowboying up and slurring his way through a time-honored tradition. We're supposed to find his spirit ineffable, undaunted, inspiring. It is supposed to be the very picture of triumph, and reportedly some stroke victims are indeed encouraged when Dick does battle with the teleprompter.

So I want very much to be the kind of person who genuinely believes -- nay, feels -- all of that feel-good. Alas, last night I was merely transfixed by a certain kind of horror.

Please, please -- I found myself saying aloud as the crystal ball dropped -- let him get the order right. Reverse chronological is tough enough under the best of circumstances. Thankfully he made it, albeit with a harrowing "6...5...4-321" finish.

Again, I know I'm an insensitive cad. Pray for me. Hate the sin, not the sinner.

But I didn't get the sense that Dick Clark was embracing his place as an empowering role model for stroke victims. I got the sense that Dick was mostly pretending he isn't a victim of stroke. There's a difference.

Deal is this: Watching Dick "ring in" the new year, I smelled Death. I feared it. And that's because I'm pretty sure Dick is deathly afraid of, well, Death--has been for a helluva long time now, what with his face-lifts and the dogged vise-grip with which he clings to Pop Music's flotsam and jetsom. Hence, he whistles through the graveyard, trying to do the same things -- and even look the same -- as ever.

Speaking of dogs, they say a canine picks up its owner's vibe. You're scared, its scared. You're calm, its calm. Well, last night, Dick had me on a choke chain on the outskirts of the Underworld, and both of us were way-way-trepid.

Here's a thought: If they'd showed Dick struggling to calm his palsied hand to dish out some soup in a homeless shelter...now that would've been a triumphal way to welcome 2007, renewed in spirit and inspired to tackle all the bogeymen it might offer us up. Whether we've suffered a stroke or will. Whether we've lost a loved one or will. Whether we're scared the Big Blue Marble's headed way off in the wrong direction and might, any day now, go kaboom.

So Dick, if you make it to ought-eight -- and because you so clearly want to, I want you to too -- feel free to steal the New Year's Rockin' Soup Kitchen idea. Might be just the butterfly we need to stir up a world-peace-tsunami around here. Now that would be a role worth modeling.