I am...

happy about the campaign Obama is finally starting to run.

I am not...

confident that the campaign he is running -- and he's only running it this way because he has been forced to -- is indicative of the kind of president he will be, the kind of president he will need to be if he is to get anything done. But it's quite possible this experience will teach him that having balls and letting people know you have them can yield good results. And since he's going to be sitting in that big white house, he might as well do something in it. The intelligence and life experience are there, I wonder if the character -- and I'm narrowly defining character here to mean "the courage to do what your heart knows is right, not just what your brain tells you is safe" -- is as well. Because he's going to need a shitload of character.

All this fuss over the VP selection, and if it isn't Hillary (and it won't be) none of it means shit, anyway. One bland, white guy is going to be pretty much the same as another. I imagine the press corps feels like they're watching American Idol, but they can't call in to cast their vote for their untalented favorite, just to show they have some power. They must be getting pretty pissed off about now.