Bimbo Baggins at the Gates of the Vice Presidency

As The Clintons' campaign sounds increasingly like Mrs. Mulwray at the end of Chinatown ("My nomination....my vice presidency....my nomination...my vice presidency..."), Americablog wonders if the she-Clinton (and Bubba) could bear the vetting that veep candidates undergo. Which may be one of the reasons Bubba has stomped so hard on that Vanity Fair article, in which so many things threaten to crawl out from under a rock.

We can only imagine what it must be like to be shortlisted for the job in the Age of YouTube, but a New York Times article about Senator Chuck Hagel gives an idea of what it was like, in 2000, not to get picked:

"Hagel says he spent $15,000 on accountant fees assembling the information the campaign demanded. Dick Cheney, the chief talent scout, interviewed him twice and sent his son-in-law around to pick up a box of documents before it was discovered that the talent scout was actually the talent.

"I still have the box," Hagel said. Nothing could be more unanswerable than the question of what might have happened in Iraq had he been picked. It's a testament to the vice president's influence that it even occurs."