Now that Hillary Clinton has thrown in the towel with plans to endorse Barack Obama for president, will her staunch supporters follow her lead and lend their support to the Illinois junior senator? Probably. But Ed Koch isn’t so willing to hop on the Obama bandwagon, not yet anyway.
        The former New York City mayor might be a little older, but his maverick streak still floods his bones.
``I will be listening to the presidential debates, inviting each candidate to persuade me to their cause, Mr. Koch wrote in an email. `` This election is for me not a party election, but rather, an ideological one.  I am a moderate, left-of-center Democrat.  They used to be called Scoop Jackson, Hubert Humphrey and Pat Moynihan Democrats.’’

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        Attention now turns to whether Hillary gets the nod as Obama' s running mate. Will Barack and Hillary be the ``Dream Team’’ or the ``Danger Team’’? That’s the question that Obama’s three-person vice president search committee, which includes Caroline Kennedy, will consider in the coming weeks. 
        In the meantime, the presumptive Democratic nominee told CNN Thursday night, he’s in no hurry to name a running mate and plans to "be deliberate and systematic about it’’.
        A wise decision. Obama shouldn’t be forced into making a decision even with Clinton supporters breathing down his neck, just to satisfy party supporters caught up in the heat of the moment.
        Besides, no future president wants to be thought of has having picked a trigger-happy running mate and live to regret it.
        Brooks Simpson, Professor of History at Arizona State University reminded me recently two vice presidents, 200 years apart, Aaron Burr and Dick Cheney, both ended up shooting people, one on purpose, the other accidentally. 
        So if you consider Mrs. Clinton was compared to Annie Oakley by her chief Democratic rival, including her threat to``obliterate Iran’’, maybe the New York senator might not be the best choice to share a ticket with Senator Obama after all.
        -Bill Lucey
         billlucey@bellsouth.net
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