In choosing your No. 2, just do you.

Obama’s Sidekick Pick
By David Swerdlick
If you watch TV or go to the movies, you’re already pretty familiar with the black sidekick. From Rochester to Robin Quivers, there is frequently at least one African American in the crew to provide a little flavor and a little, um, color. Spenser: For Hire had Hawk, Bruce Springsteen had Clarence Clemons, and Han Solo had Lando Calrissian, but now the country might have a black guy sitting in the big chair and his lieutenant, his road dog, his ace boon…well, you know, will almost certainly be white.

A few weeks ago I wrote that Sen. Barack Obama’s bid to become the first African-American president of the United States was “the political equivalent of trying to do a triple salchow in the long program with dull blades on a sprained ankle.” Of course, there’s no exact scientific means to prove that it’s harder for a black man to get elected, but just in case everything you’ve witnessed in your life is not enough empirical data for you, consider this: 12 percent of Americans are black, 14 percent of our presidents have been named Bush, Adams or Roosevelt, but zero percent of African Americans have been president.

So I’m here to tell you that if it comes to pass, being the first black president will be the political equivalent of competing in the decathlon with one contact lens, carpal tunnel syndrome and a worsted wool full-body tracksuit. A mortgage crisis, global warming, and Thursday night bowling lessons in Scranton are going to be enough of a challenge without having to worry about what your No. 2 is doing all day long. So my advice to Obama is to pick a running mate who he’s comfortable with. Don’t just base the decision on trying to lock down a particular demographic or seal off a few extra electoral votes. You’re going to be sitting next to your understudy on a lot of planes, trains and automobiles, and if you have to spend your days wondering who your sidekick is text messaging on their sidekick, then it’s going to be a long four years.

Obama has a solid, if not particularly thrilling slate of choices. Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, the straight-arrow, centrist, Midwestern political scion is the antidote to Dan Quayle. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the poorly coiffed, bilingual, native Kansan and Harvard Law grad is as close as we’ll come to a white Obama. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, über-competent, good-looking but not too good-looking for her own good and a graduate of the same prep school as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, might become the first woman President of the United States. She’s the perfect running mate for almost any Democrat…except perhaps, Barack Obama. Peggy Noonan is probably right that Americans prefer their barriers broken one at a time. To some of us, Obama and Sebelius together in a convertible Saab looks natural—like a carpool to a Common Cause meeting. But there are others who might feel like an Obama/Sebelius pairing is akin to a bad acid-trip flashback from a mandatory diversity workshop gone horribly wrong.

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