I just want to see how many hits this blog can get by mentioning Barack Obama’s name. I’ve got to think it’ll top, say, “Cedar Rapids Kernels.”

The junior senator from Illinois was in Cedar Rapids Thursday. The Hlog rolled over to Coe College to see and listen to him. I mean, the guy might be president. I’ve traveled far greater distances just for a Dairy Queen Blizzard.

Either you are if you are, and you aren’t if you aren’t. Voting for Obama, that is. I think the guy’s going to get elected, and I’ve correctly picked every one of these presidential elections since 1968, and months in advance.  Some weren’t that tough, obviously. Others showed a keen sense of the way the public felt. Yeah, right.

The candidate who seems more spirited almost always wins. That isn’t about age. (See Carter vs. Reagan). Let’s use college football as an example. If USC’s Pete Carroll ran against Penn State’s Joe Paterno, Carroll would win a landslide. But in his prime, a sharp, charismatic Paterno would have had the electorate in the palm of his hand running against virtually any other coach. And Paterno has always been old, at least in our lifetimes.

Anyway, I have no keen observations about Obama’s speech at Coe or his answers to questions from people in the crowd. You’ve either heard it before or you don’t care.

I will say this. The guy has more energy than most people I know. If I’d just been coming off a trip to Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England in the course of one week, it would take me two weeks to get off the couch once I got back home.

By the way, that is the correct way to schedule a trip like that. You don’t want to wind up your holiday in war zones. Start in an Afghanistan or Iraq, then wind up at the Champs de Elysses. Have a nice bottle of wine and some delicious delights in one of Paris’ 20,000 outdoor cafes. Or better yet, in a small mountainside village in the south of France.

Wake up, Mike.

In fact, I’d be inclined to skip the war zones altogether. That’s probably why I didn’t get my party’s nomination. It doesn’t, however, explain why I don’t get invitations to more parties.