McCain and Obama Have Bad Week with Good Friends

Scott Walterman for President! Our fellow contributor and branding guru, Thom Mozloom of the M Network, had the idea and, well, we can''t help lend our strategies to the candidacy of the silver-tongued POTUS 08 host.

Alan tells Scott, Get a VP that''ll carry the water, a surrogate who''ll behave. His play: Tap the Eastern European tax lady. Mike''s got a better idea: Be realistic. Offer yourself to McCain and Obama as their VP. You''re jaded. You''ve got Florida. And, most important, you''ve got the voice -- a killer baritone for the debates.

Will Scott tow the line? That''s the question every presidential candidate puts to surrogates. But junkies will appreciate that there are different kinds of surrogates -- see our periodic table of politics for details.

• There are Partners , co-equals who work for a common agenda, but who aren''t specifically on the dole (think Union Boss and candidate).
• And there are Proxies , credible players who happily support a candidate for some kind of consideration, and who can be expected to show a high degree of loyalty and control (think Oprah for Obama or Lieberman for McCain).

This week, in the convention run-up, no surrogate (partner, proxy or otherwise) seemed too well behaved or very on-strategy. Consider the slips:

• Jesse Jackson goes off-mic and off-script on Obama''s Father''s Day lecture to black dads.
• Hillary Clinton stumps for Obama...so long as his contributors are defraying her debt, or so it seems.
• Economic advisory to McCain, Phil Graham, thinks the recession is all mental and that the electorate are all whiners.
• And McCain''s other economic advisory, Carly Fiorina, drops the Viagra bomb in a right-wing chat. Oops.

However you score it, surrogates come in many forms and are crucial to their candidate''s success. But not these four, at least this week.

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Post by Alan Kelly