Me for Veep

Dear Mr. Obama,

I’d like you to consider choosing me as your vice president.

I admire your idea of bringing change to Washington, however vague your ideas of change might be. I say vague because, like most Americans, I haven’t been following much the day-to-day primary process, and only get my news from the randomly-heard sound bite, occasional mentions on Digg and those whacked-out folks at the Huffington Post. Perhaps you have very firm ideas of what this change might need to be. Let’s hear them. Like you, I’m all ears.

What would my name on the ticket bring you? It could well change a red state (Idaho) blue. Okay, who am I kidding? The last time Idaho voted for a Democratic president was, I believe, for Lyndon Baines Johnson. And that was, if I remember right, because he promised to KEEP us in an unpopular war. So we’re a little whacked out here. We’ve had a Democratic governor – Cecil Andrus – and a fairly prominent Democratic senator – Frank Church. But such political affectations rotate around personality, and are anomalies for red-state Idaho. But with a native son on the ticket, you might get, you know, 25 to 30 percent of the popular vote here, which is saying something. You could get at least five percent of the vote simply because you’re not Hillary.

True, Idaho’s numbers don’t look promising for Democrats – You did win the state primary by a nearly four-to-one margin, but if the election had already been held, you would have lost to John McCain, who got just over 87,000 votes to your nearly 17,000. Of those Republican votes, I could probably earn you, at most, a dozen – and those would be immediate family members. Or some of them, at least. But there is a sizeable portion of the Idaho Republican party unsatisfied with the current crop of Republican hopefuls. Six percent of those who went to the polls May 27 – a total of 7,974 voters – indicate they’re uncommitted among Republican presidential hopefuls. Even in Madison County – touted as the reddest county in the United States – a full eight percent of those who voted in the Republican primary are uncommitted. That represents, of course, disappointment that Mitt Romney isn’t on the ballot. Choosing a Mormon VP (I’m waiting for your call, Mr. Obama) could help tip the scales. Not enough to win Idaho, of course; plenty of Mormon Democrats have proved that in the past. I’d bring religion into the race by asking everyone who asked a question about my Mormonism the Golden Question: Would you like to know more? That’ll shut ‘em up in a hurry.

What else could I bring? Doritos, probably. But I insist on having my own bag. We have a wiener dog. I have my own pair of steel-toed boots. If those aren’t good in politics, I don’t know what would be. Aside from a protective cup, I imagine.

The biggest thing I could bring is Change, Mr. Obama. Why pick some slick political insider with a hundred thousand skeletons in his or her closet, when you can pick a half-Dutch former journalist technical writer father of three who has an amusing collection of rocks that resemble pig noses? I may have a few skeletons in the ol’ closet, but they’re more along the lines of cornering my sister [name redacted to protect the innocent] in the bathroom when I was six and peeing all over her because my older sister Chris [name included because she’s not all that innocent in this case] told me that if [name redacted] didn’t let me use the potty first, I should pee on her.

I don’t know a thing about politics, the economy, the military, the balance of funds, mortgages (aside from how escrows work) and I’m in favor of putting the violence back in all those old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Give me an assignment and I run with it. All right, I run as far as the nearest pizza parlor, but I do indeed run. As a neophyte, I might find ways to cut through red tape, cut spending, bloat, graft, waste and, at the same time, develop a fuel made from rocks, and give you all the credit because, Mr. Obama, I am, generally, a self-effacing kind of guy. I also might spend all my time at the vice presidential desk surfing the net and whirling around in that big leather chair. But you’ve got to admit that’s more than most vice presidents do, don’t you think? And just think of the Village Idiot vote you’d capture. I won’t even require a secure, undisclosed location because, if there’s trouble, I’ll just head home to Sugar City, and there are people in Idaho Falls, only 26 miles away, that don’t know where the hell that is, so I can’t get more secure or undisclosed, unless I go hide in one of the lava tubes out in the desert. As a plus, I don’t hunt, so there’s absolutely no chance I’ll shoot a lawyer friend, even by accident. Even if I had lawyer friends. Even if I had friends.

Change this year could mean, Mr. Obama, bringing a complete political outsider into the White House. Don’t poll after poll show that Americans are sick of politics as usual? An Obama/Davidson ticket could bill itself as Politics as Unusual.

I promise I won't get all White Boy ethnic with you, either. You and your wife may fist-thump all you want. I'll settle for something along the lines of the Wonder Twins activating their powers or something a la Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. I'll be Barnacle Boy.



I'm not bitter, though I am religious.

Oh. And I own all eleven seasons of MASH on DVD, plus the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We could have us a time with all those plasma TVs in the white house, unless Dubya takes them all back to Crawford with him.

So, Mr. Obama, I’d like to hear from you.

Vice Presidentially Yours,

BD