This is a crazy idea, and I don’t expect anything to come of it, except perhaps the slight shake of the head you will grimly give as you realize just how impossible it is.But I was watching Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton go at each other, as they’ve been doing for six eternities now. An endless 24-hour-a-day, transcontinental Punch & Judy show, pummeling each other over who has more experience and who is the true avatar of change.

And the idea formed: They’re both United States senators, right? They don’t have to just talk about what they’d do if only they had the chance. They could do stuff now.

What would happen if they both went back to the Senate, instead of campaigning so much? If for the next six or nine months they showed us exactly what kind of president they might be by working hard and passing laws and forging the hard compromises needed to run a great republic?

Wouldn’t that be better than lurching around Iowa, kissing babies, raising yet more money, and lashing out at each other? Isn’t actual change and the forging of real experience better than slavishly following the political script we all became sick of long ago? If either one really is going to be different, why not start being different right now?

Impossible, I know. Crazy, even. But I thought somebody should suggest it, because God knows the thought would never occur to either of them.

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