Thompson-Huckabee: The Clinton-Gore Ticket Updated for 2008

Thompson-Huckabee. Yep, Thompson-Huckabee.

How about this for the lucky Clinton-Gore (winners '92/'96) ticket next year?

One candidate from Arkansas, one from Tennessee.

OK, Thompson is more red meat red pick-up Reagan than blue boy Bubba/Elvis sax player. And Huckabee is more guitar-pickin' Ward Cleaver stand-up than wonky-stiff Clark Kent Inconvenient Truth Man (though both Huck and Gore proudly claim their Baptist roots). But hey, here we have two, TWO Southerners with more character and charm than the smarmy used-car salesmen (Giuliani, Romney) taking the early lead in this war-and-peace epic horserace.

The Dems only have one southerner of note, and he's a pretty-boy lawyer gone Mr. Goodhair. (Mr. Edwards, take note: looks can be seen as a silver spoon, especially in the South, and especially if one has a conspicuous, custom-built and brand spanking new McMegaMansion, a far cry from frumpy old Graceland. And to the other Dems: OK, so you're not John Kerry, but to the old-fashioned core, you're still carpetbagging Yankees.)

Meanwhile, the Republicans have a passel of Southerners, and when's the last time somebody from outside the South (or Southern California) won the presidency? Ummm, that would be... For the Democrats, that would be Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and for the Republicans, that would be Dwight D. Eisenhower, who himself was actually born in Texas but who, after he entered the army in 1919, had a neutral home state, Kansas, but no place he called home until 1950, when he and Mamie bought a farm adjacent to Gettysburg, notably not far from Washington.

So when it comes to political fashion, we've been a nation inclined, since the Great Depression and World War II, toward the South.

Thusly: Thompson-Huckabee '08.