Assorted Political Notes

First, this from Al Kamen in the Washington post:

Meanwhile, everyone who's watching Al Gore's waistline for clues as to whether he's running in '08 might want to pick up his book, "The Assault on Reason." Although it is tough on the Bush administration, it is a polemic about how the enemies of reason -- using fear and secrecy and blind faith and cronyism -- are doing a number on democracy in this country.

I love the way people in DC have glommed onto the waistline thing, as if weight loss actually were some sort of indication of Gore's presidential plans.
My position: If Gore is running for President he should stay fat--for, uh, substantive and symbolic reasons. First, it would be a subliminal signal that he's not going to run the standard campaign: He's going to be who he is, wattles and global warming and all--speak his mind, tell inconvenient truths. Second, why waste the energy losing weight when there's more important stuff to think about. Third, it's downright American to be overweight. A possible slogan: A Candidate Who Eats Baloney But Doesn't Speak it.

Regular Swampland readers may recall my profound lack of interest in the so-called money primary. But there's an interesting nugget in today's New York Times story about Obama v. Hillary fundraising. It has to with the dog who hasn't barked: Bob Rubin. Not only has Rubin's son, James, contributed to Obama, but two of his former aides at Treasury--Michael Froman and Brian Mathis--have contributed as well. Froman has a good excuse: he's an old friend of Obama's, a Harvard Law Review classmate. But Bob Rubin's silence is...golden, perhaps.