Call it the ol’ “Bait-and-Switch” trick: together, Obama and Biden are supposed only to bide time, politicking right down the line, until the convention where the real candidate will be chosen.

As I’m sure most here have read, the original plan was to run Obama for the experience to prepare him for the “serious” campaign in 2012. But things happened.

Which could be viewed as too bad. If Obama had gone quietly into that 4-year night to re-emerge at a better time, with more self-definition to balance the unsavory “associations” being branded Marxist or simply corrupt, the country and the world might have benefited from both talent and experience. But the political process put him here and now. If he loses badly – either in numbers or through miserable exposes – his career on the national stage is badly compromised, if not over.

So the convention scenario becomes a talent salvage operation.

I don’t happen to believe that.

But I never thought I would live to be this old either.