Has it really been two weeks since I last posted? It doesn't seem like it.

Some scattered thoughts on what I've read in the political blogs over the past month:

Someone (I forget who) posed and enthustiastically approed the idea that Obama, if elected, might nominate Russ Feingold to be his attorney general. I would like that, too — not so much because I like Feingold himself (though I do) but because I like what I expect he would do as attorney general. I'd be just as happy if whoever the attorney general is (and of whichever party), his first announcement is to pledge that, with the support of his president, his department's top priority will be to restore due process and rule of law to the federal government by rebuilding the constitutional checks and balances that have been eroded over the past 16 years.

Others have tossed around the idea that Obama, if elected, might form a "cabinet of rivals", alluding to President Lincoln's cabinet. (Andrew Sullivan, in particular, loves comparing Obama to Lincoln.) I find the comparison unconvincing. It falls apart because the Democratic Party today just isn't factionally divided like the young Republican Party was in 1860. Aside from Clinton, who exactly are Obama's rivals within the party? John Edwards? Joe Biden? Chris Dodd? Al Gore? Howard Dean? None of these, nor even Clinton, is really a rival to Obama in the same sense that Seward, Chase, Bates or Cameron was to Lincoln. And because of that, the significance of bringing such "rivals" into his cabinet diminishes to almost nothing.

What's more intriguing to me is that, as I understand the theory (and I haven't read Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, which I suspect is what many have in mind), a big part of the reason Lincoln did bring his Republican opponents into his cabinet is because he understood that the nation was in a particularly dismal state which would necessitate some very hard decisions by the president. That being the case, he wanted to make sure that his primary potential critics were inside the tent, not outside. Essentially, he wanted to force them to shoulder part of the responsibility for what had to be done.

If Obama really were to form a "cabinet of rivals" might it not suggest a similar attitude? If Obama thinks that the country is headed for bad times and can only be saved by some drastic and unpopular moves, that might be sufficient reason to get all his political opponents on board with him. But again, I don't think the comparison really holds, because the political alignments just don't match 1960.

I'm surprised we've heard so little this election season about how bad things are going to be for the next president. Typically there's a group of partisans arguing, "We'd be better off to lose this year. Things are going to be bad, so better to let the other party take the blame for it and try again in four years." I always hate that sentiment, since it implies that you care more about scoring popularity points for your team than actually making the nation better. If the country is headed to hell in a handbasket, isn't that all the more reason to want to take over and try to do something about it, even if it does mean being unpopular?

But if there were ever a year to be scared off of the presidency, I would think it would be 2008. (And therefore it's a credit to all the candidates in both parties who did run.) It's commonplace to the point of banality to observe that in the past eight years our national account has gone from surplus to the largest debt in history. That's not even counting all the unfunded liabilities off-budget, the decline of the dollar, and other squandered resources. But so far the conclusion to be drawn from these facts is typically, "That proves Bush is bad, and therefore you should vote Democrat," rather than, "That proves that whoever succeeds Bush is facing four years of unremitting disaster, and what the hell is he going to do about it?"

Among the squandered resources that don't appear on the government's balance sheet are national goodwill and military resources. The military may look fine now, but just as petroleum reserves are depleted if you pump all the deposits dry, so are military reserves. Today's forces are exhausted from overuse and the nation's capacity to recruit in the near future is even more drastically reduced.

One of the arguments against Sen Webb's new G.I. Bill is that it calls for extra domestic spending that we simply can't afford. I favor frugality as much as the next guy — quite a bit more than the next guy, in fact — but I don't agree. I do agree that we can't afford it, but the G.I. Bill is not to blame for the extra expense. The expense has already been incurred. The resource is already depleted, and unless you prefer to just do without from now on, it must be replenished. To blame the G.I. Bill for extra spending is sort of like drinking all the milk and leaving the empty carton in the refrigerator, then calling the next guy profligate for spending money on a new carton.

Postscript: When Benzene last looked at running mates for Obama, I listed Evan Bayh as most likely, with Bill Richardson also a reasonable guess. Nearly two months later, my position has evolved: I don't consider Richardson likely at all now, and although I don't think Bayh is out of consideration he's no longer my pick as most likely.

If I had to put money on just one name to predict, now I think I'd go with Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer. That's not based on careful analysis, just my hunch that he's a really good fit. I haven't been following the veepstakes carefully (is it my imagination, or has the news media been unusually quiet on what is normally such a popular topic?) but my general sense is that Schweitzer is near the middle of most lists but rarely near the top, though like all running mate mentionees he has a small cohort of promoters. I suppose you can count me in that cohort now.

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