Duh!
Sorry about that. It was of course Joe Leiberman that McCain wanted as his VP. Not sure how I got Liebowtiz (unless I WAS thinking of the Big Lebowski, one of my favorite movies).
Come to think about it, Walter Sobchak (the John Goodman character) from Big Lebowski would make a great Republican VP candidate -- could you imagine him going after Obama with his bowling ball??!!!!
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
And to bring this discussion full-circle and back on topic, let's not forget that Otter himself went on to be....Vice President of the United States. Sadly, though, Otter's political career will probably be remembered more for its unfulfilled promise than his actual accomplishments.
As a prominent Democratic senator from Texas, Otter was the odds-on favorite to win the party's nomination for President, but something was missing, and some of the people closest to him knew it. In hindsight, maybe he should've sensed a problem when one of his top staffers (who was presumably no relation to Otter's road trip alter ego) defected to the longshot campaign of the Nobel laureate governor of New Hampshire.
In retrospect, Otter's selection as the VP candidate made tactical sense. While he and the President had a cool relationship and grudgingly respected (but otherwise didn't really care much for) each other, the pairing gave the party a ticket that unified the insurgent and establishment wings, and carried at least some cachet in the South. And while nobody else knew it at the time, the arrangement required Otter to delay his presidential ambitions for only four years (or so he thought), as the President secretly intended (at least initially) to serve only one term due to an undisclosed health condition. Of course, the President later changed his mind, ran for and won re-election, and poor Otter was undone by a sex scandal after he had an affair with a DC socialite (given his antics at Faber, are we really surprised?), and he resigned the Vice Presidency. He later wrote a tell-all book and tried to make a political comeback, running again for the Democratic nomination for President, but he ultimately lost to another Texan and his political career was pretty much over at that point.
I knew a Gopher who became a Congressman, and when I lived in Atlanta I was represented by a Cooter.
So there you have it.
The situation with Rubio as a potential VP pick and the relationship to his position on immigration is interesting. The idea that Rubio fixes all of Romney's problems on immigration is questionable.
For starters, most observers would say that Rubio's position on immigration is squarely to the right of most Hispanic voters'. Moreover, all Hispanics are not alike, and they don't all come from the same place, despite what some in the media would have us assume. Rubio is Cuban-American. Cubans have enjoyed almost unfettered access to our shores for some time now, and are granted automatic citizenship, in stark contrast to the plight of would-be emigres from other Latin American countries. There is resentment towards Cubans from the citizens of many other Latin countries, and Cuban-Americans are viewed by many Latinos as "privileged" and "elites."
Perhaps most importantly, Rubio has been engaged in a well-publicized war over Univision's coverage of some of the personal and family-related skeletons in Rubio's closet. Univision is by far the most influential opinion leader for Hispanic voters nationwide, and is on record as well as being strongly in favor of a type of comprehensive immigration reform that would not be palatable to Rubio, if his past statements are any guide.
While Rubio's presence on the ticket would surely strengthen Romney's hand in Florida, his impact on the crucial "Hispanic vote" in the rest of the nation, is, in my mind, uncertain.
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the wya the world ends
Not with a bang, but a whimper."
-- T.S. Eliot, on Newt's announcement today (attrib.)