Convention fever!!

I’ve just gotten over my Olympic fever, when lo and behold I’ve come down with Convention Fever!!

 

Yippee!

 

Back when I was in High School there was this thing called a “citizen’s bee”, which was like a spelling bee, but with civics questions and historical junk.

 

I made it through the school competition by being the only person to sign up (first place out of 1, yay!), and went on to the district competition where I won either first or second place, can’t remember.  What I do remember is the state competition was the same weekend as prom, and it was, in fact, my senior year.

So, I had to fly to Austin on Saturday morning, compete in this thing with a bunch of egg-heads who probably weren’t going to prom anyway, then scoot back to Houston to go to prom (which is, in and of itself, a whole ‘nuther story that I’ll be happy to share over some beers and tequila some time).

Anyway, the competition was broken into 2 parts, written and verbal.  The written part was a brief essay and a few multiple choice questions.  The verbal part was 3 questions posed by judges that you had to give a brief answer to.

My questions  (remember, it’s 1992 at the time):

Who is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee?  (Joe Biden)

Joe Biden is a member of the Foreign Relations committee and chair of the Judiciary committee, why is he not chair of both? (Senate rules forbid holding the chair of 2 committees simultaneously)

What is the name of the theme song for Bill Clinton’s campaign? (Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, but I totally had no clue on this answer).

 

I thought the third question was a bit of a cheap shot.  Not really civics, more current events.  But what the hey, I still rocked.

 

That completely pointless diversion aside, I don’t think Biden is too bad of a choice.  He’s certainly not a boat anchor a-la Dan Quayle in 1992, and he brings a lot to the ticket that Obama doesn’t have.  Unfortunately, he also brings a lot to the ticket that Obama doesn’t have, like long running Senate experience (he was elected to office when Obama was 5), insider cred (again, 35 years in the Senate), and a long train of disparaging remarks about Obama’s readiness and ability to do the job.

This will certainly be an interesting time for all.