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Thursday 
05 June 2008
I’ll have one scoop of Vanilla Veep, please.
With all the talk going on about Obama’s VP selection, I find myself craving vanilla, and no fancy-schmancy, elitist Häagen-Dazs vanilla either.
Let’s face it: There will be a massive, orchestrated attempt to smear and swiftboat Barack Obama. Anyone doubting that is living in a fantasy world. The thing is, Obama and his campaign team have proved themselves to be up to the challenge, hitting back deftly and strongly after each attack. Obama doesn’t rattle, doesn’t tip-toe around, doesn’t test every response via a focus group. There will always be an unreachable base of people to whom the smear memes will appeal and stick, but Obama has a better chance of managing this than any candidate I’ve seen in my lifetime.
I’ll take this a step further. A pet theory of mine is that the swiftboating could actually backfire and work to Obama’s advantage. As long as he chooses a running mate who is as bland and baggage-less as possible, the Obama campaign won’t have to defend two fronts. And, let’s face it, the blander the person the less baggage they seem to have.
Obama has enough charisma to carry the campaign, and Americans continue to prefer vanilla:
Based on ice cream consumption figures, the top five individual flavors in terms of share of segment in the United States are:
1. vanilla (26%),
2. chocolate (12.9%)
3. neapolitan (4.8%)
4. strawberry (4.3%)
5. cookies n’ cream (4.0%)Source: The NPD Group’s National Eating Trends Services, via MostPopular.net
We’ve tried running vanilla candidates for POTUS before — Al “pre-Inconvenient Truth” Gore, John Kerry — and that didn’t work, so we can’t base our decision on the ice cream stats alone.
But, how about this metaphor:
- Obama = apple pie
- Vanilla Running Mate = à la mode
Now THAT sounds like a delicious ticket!
I just have to figure out who in the Obama administration will be the caramel sauce.
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Remember, creative types choose vanilla.
Rocky Road Prexy + Vanilla VP = Case Closed. :)
You’ve got a point. And I agree. But all the assassination-mongering done by the media since Tuesday really has me wanting him to choose neopolitan. Maybe not somebody who’d make an excellent Prez, but somebody who offers a little something more for everybody. Somebody who could calm the nation after the (race) riots. And somebody who could stear the boat of Obama’s unfinished business.
Is such a person out there, vanilla or neopolitan?
Hmmm, with vanilla VPs, the candidates would make for the ingredients of Neopolitan since McCain has been looking an awful lot like a cheap imitation strawberry as of late.