So, who’s it going to be?

Friends and neighbors, colleagues and activists – people I know who know what I do - want to know the answer before it happens. My life-long Republican father can’t resist the question. He asked me over the weekend, again.

“So, who is Barack Obama going to pick for Vice President?”

I gave him the same answer I gave the last time he asked.

Of course, just about everyone has their own answer, a calculated reasoning, a strategy behind the “who and why” THEY think the pick should be. All of them make sense in some way. All of them use conventional presidential campaign “wisdom” – the traditional criteria candidates supposedly consider in choosing a running mate - for their logic. Obviously, most of them will be wrong as will a number of pundits and experts who speak with such authority yet have so little.

VP buzz is a great game to play.

Almost none of the folks I talk with care about John McCain’s pick. Such is the peril of relying on a self-selected focus group for determining what the public is thinking. Democrats, Republicans and independents who have given up on the Republican Party as the party of integrity, trustworthiness and principle just don’t care what those guys do anymore, even if John McCain is a man whose service to our nation is worthy of praise and respect. And, he is.

But, Sen. McCain continues to defy his own ad campaign; turning his back on the “maverick” image that he hopes will continue to fool voters while flip-flopping the very “maverick” positions he once held as he panders to his party’s base. Much of that base still views him as nothing more than their “hold-your-nose” candidate, at best.

McCain hopes to paper over that problem by continuously repeating a new campaign slogan that is nothing more than a generic appeal to patriotism. It’s a wonderful way to live your life. It’s an honorable attitude for a citizen to have in the greatest nation on the face of the planet. Besides, “A third Bush term” just doesn’t connect despite the fact that John McCain told us we could trust Bush with our nation.

Now even McCain uses Bush as little more than a punch line in those campaign ads.

How can he hug George Bush - and his cash cows - one second and declare Bush’s presidency to be a failed joke on the American people the next, while keeping a straight face? That’s no maverick.

While polls show McCain remains very competitive in this race, his “strong support” numbers remain half of Obama’s. Not a good trend. Can he solidify that with his VP choice? We’ll see.

Will McCain promise the voters he’ll serve just one term in office, making his VP choice an automatic wedge issue within his own party? We’ll see.

Is that a gimmick his campaign thinks it needs to compensate for inherent weaknesses? We’ll see.

Now for the hard part. What do I think about this important moment for Barack Obama in what has been an absolutely brilliant campaign? Unlike McCain, Sen. Obama will choose a running mate from a position of strength.

Beyond that, I think I don’t need to be saying what I think. I have no crystal ball. If I did I would keep it to myself, anyway.

That job belongs to one person and one person only and he doesn’t need another guess from the sidelines to help him make it. He’s already made history defying conventional wisdom and I trust him.

And that’s what I told my father.