Dear Caroline,

You’d be a far better VP than those rightwing Democrats the pundits say you and Obama will likely choose, but don’t pick yourself like Cheney did, when there’s an even better choice – one more appealing to those pesky diehard Clinton supporters -- in plain view. Since they think being a First Lady and a wounded woman are qualifications, and since they’re into dynastic politics (along with dysfunctional families), and inasmuch as the idea is to placate them, the choice is clear: your cousin, Maria Shriver is the one. Not only is she a Kennedy by another name; she’s also a Vice Presidential candidate’s daughter. Not only is she a “straight talker” who can charm a gullible press; she is the press. She’s “bipartisan” too, like Obama likes, but not abominable -- like George Bush or John McCain or, for that matter, the Obamanable publisher Mary Matalin. After all, the man she got her “experience” from, though Republican, is still less right-wing (or, as “liberal” NPR would have it, “centrist”) than that red faced, finger wagging, “girlie man” who just won’t go away.