Green Dam has many uses. It can police a list of forbidden Web sites. It can monitor a user's reading habits. It can even enlist the computer in some massive botnet attack, as part of a hypothetical future cyberwar.

The assumption is that each voter will vote for the candidate or party that is closest to his or her political position. Thus when a candidate takes a position to the right of the other candidate he or she will get the votes of all to the right of that position. As with the ice cream sellers on the beach the political candidates will choose a political position that is virtually the same as their opponent's. Furthermore the candidates will be driven to select the political position of the median voter.

Biden usually requires 90 seconds just to warm up and lubricate his vocal cords, after which he reliably barks some ridiculous gaffe.

The personality of the vice president is also a potentially decisive factor. He well exemplifies the mentality of the Bush aide (Karl Rove?) who in a conversation with Ron Suskind in 2004 mocked "the reality-based community," comprised of people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." No, he argued: "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

It would be an act of terminal insanity for Barack Obama to name Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential candidate. It would not help him get elected, it would drag all the Clinton controversies into the general election, and having her down the hall in the West Wing would be a recipe for disaster, dissension and civil war. Other than that, it’s a hell of an idea!

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Finally, having Hillary in the West Wing would be a nightmare. There is no way that Obama could trust her. She would be a throwback to the old days when the president did not consult the vice president on anything, a situation which led Vice President John Nance Garner, FDR’s VP during his first two terms, to call the office “not worth a pitcher of warm piss.”