This is quite a different posting from my "Run, Possum, Run!" posting of a couple years back. This time, I'm asking all visitors to consider clicking on "Donate" button found on the FirstGiving widget on the side of this page, and making a donation to my wife's campaign to raise $2000.00 for the Organization for Autism Research (OAR). She is raising the money as part of OAR's team for the Marine Corps Marathon this fall in Washington, DC, which will almost be her twentieth marathon (!!!). Check out her page, and if it's at all possible for you, please give.

Run, Mommy!

George Will's column for today argues that beer is evolution's way of keeping us (us humans) alive. I'm more of a wine-man, but the argument is intriguing.

"[R]imless Trotsky-style spectacles"? I'm stealing that phrase for later use…

On this, the morning after the supposed clinching of the Democratic nomination by Barack Obama, the question of the day is: what does Hillary want? The answer to that question at the moment is: beats me. Those close to the candidate will know how the end-game should play out, if it is, indeed, an end-game.

But my answer to the question "what should Obama do?" is likewise simple: nothing. By which I mean: nothing at all.

Now that he is the de facto if not the de iure nominee, Obama needs to focus on November, and needs to start doing the things that will convince the country—convince enough of the country, that is—that he is up to the job of chief executive, the commander-in-chief. He needs to call his own shots now. More than that, he needs to be seen calling his own shots. The summary severing of his ties with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Church in Chicago—pick your medical image: amputating a gangrenous limb or cauterizing a wound—shows that he knows political realities, and can make final, if painful and tardy, political decisions. He'll do better next time.

But seeking out a rapprochement with Clinton does not help him do that, and putting her on the ticket as his VP—gasp!—certainly doesn't help him, even if there is a certain justice in wedding these two "firsts" (African-American and woman) together into one "dream team" ticket. The President calls the shots, while the Vice-President goes to funerals. And waits for the phone-call. Having Clinton on the ticket will mean having sixteen years of Clinton public-presence looking over Obama's shoulder, and will lead to constant second-guessing of Obama's decisions and policies by Clinton-supporters and the media, which in turn will diffuse the public's attention on Obama-being-presidential: "is that how you would have done it, Senator Clinton?" "What does your husband think of Obama's position on ______?" At the moment all eyes need to be on Obama, on him alone, and he needs to be convincing.

Besides, Obama really doesn't need Clinton's help in capturing her main supporters during the primaries. Once Democrat women who supported Clinton over Obama learn that John McCain is strongly pro-life—many confuse his positions with those of Rudy Giulliani—and that his approach to Supreme Court nominees is essentially that of George W. Bush, they will have nowhere else to go but to Obama. And men who supported Clinton over Obama have five months to be won over by a display on his part of intelligent determination, which he has in abundance. John McCain has encouraged Obama—dared him, in fact—to go to Iraq and meet the military leaders there, and the troops. Be careful what you ask for; if Obama goes over there, talks sense, and wins the respect of the generals and the corporals, and it's caught on camera, he'll win the election.

We are but one day removed from the end of our daily helping of the Democrat primary so we might forget how different today is from yesterday; Barack Obama won, Hillary Clinton lost. He can be President, she can't. Two people with razor-thin policy differences between them, but as to their futures, quelle différence. So as regards Hillary Clinton Obama should do nothing, initiate nothing. Instead he should move forward as his own man, with his own agenda and persona. But if she calls he should answer the phone, and schedule a date for lunch—in December.

For me, the historical importance of Obama's nomination is not mainly that this nation might soon see its first African-American president. To be sure, such an outcome has a fittingness that would satisfy, given the long, bitter road leading to today from America's original sin of slavery. Yet I quickly remind myself that the American government does not promise an equality of outcomes, but rather a modest equality of opportunity before the law.

No, for me the important thing is that this fall we shall see a contest between two candidates that will be, by all pertinent measures, one in which the law does not favor one candidate over the other on the basis of the color of his skin—or her gender, had Hillary Clinton been the nominee for the Democrats—and one in which the candidates accomplished their nominations though open competition within their respective parties. In November, in other words, the two candidates will start from the same starting line and race to a common finish line. Because of Obama's presumptive nomination, this fall America will get to see a fair fight.

So in this respect it matters little to me whether it's John McCain or Barack Obama who wins the contest; that it is an equal contest at all makes it historically satisfying.

I've become something of a political junkie this past year, and have decided to make an occasional post about the American scene during this election cycle. You have been warned. . .