The Saturday announcement

Last Thursday on MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews lectured the Obama campaign on the proper day of the week to make a major announcement.

He said the vice presidential pick should be announced on Thursday, because that's the day newspaper columnists are writing their Sunday columns and TV producers are arranging their Sunday show rundowns.

Nobody announces anything big on a Friday, Matthews said, and certainly not on a Saturday.

He'd be right except for one thing.

The Obama campaign promised to make the first announcement of the candidate's vice presidential pick by sending text messages to the cell phones of supporters.

Imagine what might happen to the nation's cell phone networks when millions of those messages go out at the same time, and when everyone receiving the message forwards it to five people and then calls somebody to chat about it.

Crash! No service! Millions of cell phone users around the country simultaneously cursing Barack Obama's name!

On Saturday, when cell phone and Internet traffic are lightest, the risk of an electronic public relations disaster is much lower.

Barack Obama is very smart.

We just hope he's smart enough not to pick Joe Biden.


Copyright 2008

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