Travis LaFrance
At Home in the Halls of Power

Barack and Terese: The New Swashbucklers

As a globetrotting adventure author with a flair for elegance, I've often bemoaned the slate of Democrats as a bunch of milquetoast paper-pushers (Geppy) and outright weenies (Lieberman). Where's the panache? Where's the exotic? Who will be our Teddy Roosevelt, slaying wildebeests on safari in Botswana?

As of last night, they've arrived: the son of a Kenyan goat herder who shot to the top of the Harvard Law Review and an immigrant from Mozambique who speaks five languages and married not one but two U.S. Senators.

Now these are some people Travis LaFrance could hang out with. You know: bumping across the Serengeti in a Land Cruiser, late-night chats about metaphysics aboard a sloop off the Azores, rushing into the Sudan by helicopter with Kofi Annan and a team of Swiss surgeons. The highballs are stout and the Gauloises burn from silver-tipped holders. Therese will lean in close and chide with her continental purr: "The prince says that you and Barack are not to leave the palace grounds until you've finished drafting the new constitution."

That's what I call restoring American prestige across the globe.

Now just wait for the future presidential primary between Obama and John Edwards, when Barack gets to say, "I've always believed that in America, the son of a goat herder can defeat the son of a mill worker, and become President of the United States."