And No, I Don't Wear a Flag Pin on My Lapel Either

"Look, Dad!", Lucas said from the backseat. "It's Barat Omama!"

It wasn't him in the flesh, just a picture of him along with Hillary Clinton and John McCain, part of a talk radio ad displayed on the side of a bus that we were passing.

"Yep. Barack Obama is how he says it."

"Oh. We like him, right? Is he a Good Guy?" To Lucas, there are Good Guys (Indiana Jones, Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark) and Bad Guys (Megatron, Darth Vader, Tim Duncan). Ah, to be four, living in a world without gray.

"I think so. In the United States, we get to pick our president - kind of like the boss of the country - and he's the guy I'm picking."

"Oh. Who are those other two people?"

"Well, they also want to be president."

"Oh. Are they the Bad Guys?"

Yes, I thought. She's a pathological liar/megalomaniac/power addict with delusions of entitlement, and he's a mercurial half-senile warmonger who gave up any claim he once had of being a "maverick" when he stood up to be counted with Bush and his neocon puppeteers. "Nope. They just have different ideas about how to be a good president. That doesn't necessarily make them bad."

"Oh. You know who I want to be president? Optimus Prime!"

"Well, he would make a pretty good president. Think of the money we'd save - wouldn't need Air Force One, the Secret Service, and the war would be over pretty quick..."