dear barack obama,
Everyone’s wondering who you’ll pick as your running mate. I must admit, I’m quite curious as well. Both you and McCain face a wide-open field of candidates and big deficiencies with the electorate that you’re going to need to account for. I feel pretty confident that your worthy adversary, John McCain, will end up picking Romney. After all he’s young, and he’s got very solid economic credentials– both significant challenges for the Honorable Senator from Arizona.

Your biggest issue with the undecideds is likely your youth, and by virtue of that, relative inexperience. People really freak out about inexperience when they’re talking national security and foreign policy, so picking a relative grey-hair who has good foreign policy credentials is kind of all the more important. But I want you to go beyond that. If America is going to regain her footing in a tough world out there, we’re going to need to stop the internal squabbling. Stopping our petty infighting will be no small matter, and in fact, on it’s face, seems impossible. But you’re saying all the right things and have thus far relatively avoided fanning the flames of partisanship. Now, I want you to take it one step further:

Pick Chuck Hagel as your running-mate.

That’s right, Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska. He’s got the foreign policy experience and you share common ground on some issues (immigration, the war in Iraq) and differ on others (environment, abortion, etc). But Chuck Hagel gets what’s eating away at America: partisanship and the two-party system as a whole. And the fact that you disagree with Hagel on many issues is a great thing. It will mean that there will be a diverse discussion inside the White House, and the eventual policies and bills that a Obama-Hagel administration (assuming you used him as more than a token) supports, would, for once, actually mirror the positions of most Americans. Most of us, as you know, aren’t extremists on the issues. It’s just that we’ve been forced to the edges, and had to pick sides. This is a first step to stopping that BS.

If we’re going to truly enact any kind of change, we need to stop being our own worst enemy. Democrats and Republicans arguing over the stupidest stuff enrages me. It’s like a married couple arguing about their kid’s bed time while he’s outside playing in traffic, about to get hit by a car. Anyway, I’m in danger of digression, and I get that you’re busy writing notes to Scarlet.

Throw America a bone? Hagel?

Wait a minute…Hagel’s policies are also far from Senator McCain’s policies. Maybe he can choose him and that would be close to a bi-partisan ticket. Maybe I should write him a let….

Love,
surya

P.S. Hagel! Hagel! Hagel!