Name that VEEP!

Name that VEEP!

WHY SHOULD STAID OLD PUNDITS have all the fun in political guessing games? Let’s bring you into play.

Join us in taking the Lowdown Presidential Survey–a free-wheeling, thoroughly unscientific poll, asking you Lowdowners to designate people who might serve as officials in the next presidency. We want to know your choice for vice president, of course but don’t stop there –who should serve in other key positions, from FEMA director to Supreme Court?

Remember, you’re as likely to be right as any of the establishment seers, so have fun! This month, we’ll start with your selections for the Obama Administration, then, next month you can do it again with names for the McCain Administration. We’ll print a report on your choices–and, yes, we most certainly will forward the results to Obama and McCain, so they can get the real lowdown directly from you grassroots folks.

Take the survey now over at SurveyGizmo.

Others in the guessing game:

EbonyJet.com writers launched a frenzy of cabinet-speculating among online pundits in May when they posted their lists of what an Obama cabinet might look like at www.ebonyjet.com/politics/national/index.aspx?id=7821. One suggested Colin Powell for VP because he is a retired four-star general, a Republican, and a famously popular person. Another suggested sending the Obamas’ best friend/advisor Valerie Jarrett as ambassador to London, John Kerry to Paris, and Al Gore to the UN.

Washingtonian.com ran theirs, also in May (at www.washingtonian.com/blogarticles/people/capitalcomment/7641.html), as did Will Thomas at HuffingtonPost, followed at HuffPo by Thomas de Zengotita who argued this month that Obama should name the team now because we deserve to know who’s lining up and because “putting Obama at the center of a team of rivals” (biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin’s term for Lincoln’s administration) would “dampen the he’s-not-one-of-us factor that is…still the greatest danger Obama faces.”

For foreign policy advisors, check www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4940.

For all the huffing and puffing, most names being floated are senators and governors who generate limited excitement; but we know Lowdowners will be more creative.