I don't know how or why it happened.  Not two days ago I was marveling at the Hillary conundrum.  That Obama could unite the party with the pick, but in doing so, would compromise his new Washington message and piss supporters like me off royally.  Plus there's the whole Bill Clinton as VP thing and a dozen other solid reasons that this is a bad idea.

But there I was last night, making dinner, and suddenly it hit me, and not even that hard, that I didn't care.  Me, the biggest Obama shill I know, buying his whole message hook, line and sinker.  But it's true.  I don't care.  I'm not sure why, but I don't.  In fact:

Hillary would be a good VP.  Now, this is assuming she's totally on board and not aiming to undermine his campaign, then she's got a lot to offer.  She'll a mad-dog campaigner.  She brings with her a ton of voters, and hell, she has been pretty bi-partisan since becoming a Senator (though often, in bad ways).

More importantly, Hillary as VP doesn't bother me.  I mean, I would rather her in the VP than the cabinet.  Hands down.  That's a no-brainer to me.  I know we have this whole new VP idea nowadays, but that's a role that the president orchestrates, and if President Obama doesn't want her out front (and on many issues he wouldn't), then he'll tell her to go home.  Easy as that.  Happens to VP's all the time.

So then, what about her war vote, her lobbyist ties, her husband?  I do worry about the possible October surprise of Bills recent womanizing that could undermine the ticket...but other than that, I don't care.  It's VP, and I'm not voting for the VP.  I don't expect the President to die and if that awful thing happened, then his legacy will be defined in part by the initiatives he was pushing for.  The VP will not come in and just start a wholesale new direction or something.  I mean, we don't hold Kennedy responsible for Johnson's failures nearly as much as we honor Kennedy through Johnson's successes.

And, who better to truly introduce Obama to the scared white vote (WV, Kentucky, Penn), than someone who has stoked the fires of those fears?  He'd be like her token black friend, and therefore, he'd be "okay."  We've all met people who think like this, and Hillary of late has engendered herself to them.  She's on the inside.   So then, put her in at VP and if a quarter of the bigots out there mustered up the nerve to check an Obama ticket, you gotta think that's an amazing thing.

So there it is.  Hillary for VP.  Lots of upside, and as of last night, the downside just doesn't bother me.  And although I'm fairly (completely) certain Obama could win without her, a landslide victory would do wonders for the sort of big ideas Obama wants to get off the ground.  Plus, all my disaffected Republican friends voting for Obama could stomach it I think.  We all understand the necessity of political expediency.

(One last thought: I reserve the right to completely change my mind.  Anticipating people like Billy Glad's possible response to this post already has me thinking I might.)