"And now I'm proud to present the next President of the United States..."

I’ll leave the meaningful analysis of the issues to the educated pundits and tackle something a little more in the spirit of this blog: campaign songs. I'll tell you what I would have picked as the campaign song. Also, there will be complaining about Canadians. I'd love to hear your ideas on campaign songs, too, so bring it on in the comments. Today, we do the Democrats.

Hillary Clinton: “Blue Sky” by Big Head Todd and The Monsters

Clinton’s theme song used to be “You and I” by Celine Dion but it was replaced after Hillary’s campaign belatedly realized the song was written as the theme for Air Canada. Far more troubling to me is the fact that Celine Dion is a French-speaking Canadian, and as everyone knows, they hate two things: Freedom and America. So it’s good that the theme song has been replaced. It doesn’t really matter what she replaced it with, so long as it’s not the theme of a foreign airline or written by a freedom-hating Canadian.

My suggestion:
Clinton campaign events often play “Suddenly I See” by KT Tunstall which I think would have been a great theme song for Hillary’s campaign except it has the word “hell” in it and that’s probably still considered profanity in some parts of the fucking country.

Barak Obama: “Move On Up” by Curtis Mayfield

When I first looked up Obama's campaign song I thought for one horrible moment that Obama had chosen “Movin’ On Up” the theme from the tv show "The Jeffersons". I kid you not. I had a full minute of trying to imagine Senator Obama walking onto the stage, waving to the crowd, with "The Jeffersons" theme song playing in the background. It was like Ron Paul’s wet dream. Then I saw the name of the artist and realized I was thinking of something totally different. Still, it scares me that when I see the title of the song the first thing I think of is The Jeffersons. Apart from the fact that people of my generation may have that momentary incorrect association (and there’s really only about a dozen people in my generation voting anyway) this actually seems like a good choice. It has a positive message and there's an association with the civil rights movement. There's always the danger that people will associate a song from that era with smelly hippies having sit-ins. And it doesn't have enough of a rock n roll to it that makes you want to jump up to your feet when he walks on stage like when Clinton the First used "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac. Now there's a song the Teamsters can dance to.

My suggestion:
Obama would probably get flack if he didn’t choose an African-American artist. Ok, fine, but since Obama is the youngest candidate* my choice would be something more modern. For example, Kanye West’s “I Wonder” which contains the line, “Do you even remember what the issue is?” This seems appropriate given Obama’s long, imprecise answers. When he’s done answering a question and you feel like, wow, that was so inspirational… and yet I have no idea what he just said.

John Edwards
“This Is Our Country” by John “formerly the Cougar” Mellencamp.

This is actually a pretty good choice. It’s upbeat, the lyrics are positive and it hasn’t been used as a theme by a Canadian airline.

My Suggestion: “When It’s Over” Sugar Ray
It’s endearing that Edwards is still out there running for President (as far as I can tell that’s all he’s been doing since the last election) but at this point his chances of getting ahead of Hil-Barak are minimal. Which is fine with me, because even though I like his politics he’s a trial lawyer and I trust those guys about as far as I can throw them in their money-lined suits.

Edwards has been paying Obama a lot of compliments lately, which makes me wonder if he’s hoping to be tapped as a running mate. Maybe he can get one of the moderators to pass Obama a note at the next debate - I guess the kids don’t really do that anymore, a text message is probably more appropriate (“U R cool. Want 2 B running m8s?”).

Tomorrow: Republican theme songs!

*total conjecture. He looks like the youngest, he’s certainly the least experienced, but I just can’t be bothered to double-check.