Summer is upon us, which means any schedule that might have existed during the school year has completely dissipated. Wally and the Snapper are in and out at odd hours—actually, more out than in, which wouldn’t be such a bad thing except they have tendency to take my car when they go out.    

The other day they headed out the door together and I automatically yelled, “where are you going and when will you be back??”.  The Snapper stuck his head back in the door and said, “Mom, chill-ax.  We’ll be back in an hour.”  I said, “Where are you going?”  He said, “Why do you need to know?” and I said I wanted to know how much gas would be in the car when they got back.  He shook his head.  He said, “Mom, you need to be more like Obama—you know, focus on the big picture and let everyone else handle, you know, the other stuff.”  

I was stunned.  I said, “What, was there a political special on ESPN?” and he said “No, I was reading this story the other day online, and it’s all about how Obama doesn’t sweat the little things.”   I said, “I thought running for president was all about sweating the details.” The Snapper rolled his eyes.  He said, “That’s what assistants are for Mom.” 

I swear this kid watches too much VH1.  When he’s not watching ESPN. 

I logged onto the story:(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/us/politics/16manage.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin) and sure enough, there was a quote from the man himself, telling an aide, “You know what, Paul? All I want from you is for you to do your best, and I trust you and you know what you’re doing.”   

These are words my kids would die to hear me say when they head out the door on a weekend night.   

I shared this conversation with Susan at a neighbor’s graduation party.  We were there in part because there was a margarita machine.  Susan had volunteered to make sure it didn’t run low, so our chairs were pulled up next to it.  Susan took a long sip while I filled her in.  She said, “Well, maybe Obama will surround himself with smart people, get some help when he needs to make important decisions.” I said, “You mean, like parents who hire nannies to help out?” And she said, “Yes!”  I said, “That’s what everyone said about W. and look what happened there.”  She said, “You’re right.” 

We both took a long sip.  Susan said thoughtfully, “Come to think of it, Obama’s campaign really resembles W.’s campaign.  You have this guy who is completely inexperienced and he runs on that inexperience, in fact, he’s proud of it—he promotes it!  And he has a campaign manager like Karl Rove.  Remember how Rove and Bush came up with the line, ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us?’ “  I said I did.  She continued, “Well, Obama’s guy—what’s his name, Axelrod—he started going around in February saying we had to get behind Obama to unite the party, meaning if you didn’t vote for Obama, you weren’t uniting the party – you were against ‘us’.  It’s amazing - like he’s using Rove’s handbook.” 

I said, “If Axelrod gets his inexperienced guy elected, he’ll have to put together an advisory circle, like Rove did for Bush.  Someone who actually has experience running things. I wonder who he’ll choose?”  Susan said, “Well, I hear Caroline Kennedy’s on board.” 

We took a break and refilled the machine and then we had to test a few batches, for quality control.  The Snapper wandered over and pretended he thought the margarita machine was a frozen ice cream machine, but Susan waved him away. He tried to charm her attention away from the machine by asking what we were talking about.  She said, “We’re trying to figure out who’s going to help Obama govern if he gets elected. Your mom thinks he needs to hire someone like a nanny.”  I said, “You need to step away from that machine! I didn’t say he needed a nanny, I said he needed to hire help and I used the parent-nanny analogy!”  But the Snapper said, “That’s not a bad idea!” 

He said, “Listen! They could do a reality TV show about it, like the one they have about parents in trouble who need a Nanny!  But you could make it a competition—like Tila Tequila—have a contest to pick who the advisors are!  Each week the contestants would have to accomplish some task, like – like—give me an example of presidents have to do?” I said, “Fix a failing economy?”  The Snapper said, “Yes!  So like one week you could have these guys compete to see who could best help him fix the economy and whoever wins gets to become an advisor and then the next week he could pick someone to help him—I don’t know..” and Susan said, “Manage a large organization” and the Snapper said, “Whatever.”  

Susan said to him, “I’m tempted to give you a drink for coming up with that idea” and I shut down the machine.  I said, “Are you crazy?” and she said, “What? It’s the perfect solution.  Everyone would watch it, it would be participatory democracy.  A win/win situation as they say.  They could run it on VH1 or even You Tube!”   And I said, “Or we could just elect someone with experience”.  The Snapper shook his head.  He said, “Who would watch that ?