re: #41 retired cynic

She was the most respected woman in the world for a lot of those 30 years.

Too bad she wasn’t for the head of the UN, eh?

Not that I don’t love Duckworth. I do! And am proud she is my senator. And she would be better than T or P right now. But I want her to keep learning about the levers of power. Maybe she will be ready in 2 years to start a run, but I think it may just be too early. The same worries me about the Castro brothers.

Tammy already has more experience in DC than Obama did in ‘08. We’ll she how she does in the Senate as a minority member. She’s a smart cookie, and I think she’ll do well. As to the Castro’s, I think they’ll concentrate on Texas for the next few years. They’re young and the demographics are coming to them.

I want the best person we can get, and if it is a white male, than I’m all in. We obviously are going to need someone with a lot of stage presence and ability to connect, and that ain’t easy.

I agree, but Obama came out of nowhere.

True story.

In July, 2004, a dear friend of She Who Must Be Obeyed, the late, great, Val Phillips (Sen. Al Gore Sr’s. ex Press Sec) visited us and said that she and her long-time companion Bob “Little” Mann (Ted Kennedy’s ex Press Sec) had signed on to sponsor a fund raiser at Gary Mauro’s house for a guy who was running for a Senate seat in Illinois with “the ridiculous name of Barack Hussein Obama”. Would we throw a hundred bucks in the pot and co-sponser?

Of course, we said, anything for you, Val.

The next month, he had a keynote at the Dem Convention. A favor for a friend turned out to be a pretty good idea. In September, we met the Candidate, I shared a smoke with him (I had a tin of Altoids! Be prepared!) and I gave him money every year, which got us Christmas cards, so I got to watch the girls grow up.

It’s a small world, but you wouldn’t want to paint it.