Ticket Replay: Change we can't believe in: Obama and Larry Craig on same ticket
The Ticket is republishing some favorite items during these next few days. Here's an amusing one originally published here back on July 28, 2008:
Here's how Republican Idaho is:
In 1992, Bill Clinton came within 1 percentage point of finishing third there in the general election behind President George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot.
So it was surprising to many during this past primary season when Sen. Barack Obama invested an unusual amount of time for a Democrat in the scenic potato state.
Now, an even bigger surprise: According to a new political button just unveiled, Obama is running on the same political ticket as Republican Sen. Larry Craig, who had that embarrassing toe-tapping to-do in the summer of 2007 in the men's room of the Minneapolis Airport.
No, really!
As you can see from the photo, Obama and Craig are shown shoulder-to-shoulder on the button, which has become an instant classic collector's item.
It is, of course, a mistake. A hilarious one. After announcing his retirement and then unannouncing it to finish his six-year term, Craig is not running for anything this fall.
Instead, Lt. Gov. Jim Risch is representing the GOP in the U.S. Senate race against Democrat Larry LaRocco, whose photo was supposed to be on the button next to Obama. Risch and LaRocco are longtime Idaho political foes, having faced each other twice for state Senate and lieutenant governor, with Risch winning both times.
The button company, Tigereye Design out of Ohio, simply picked the wrong Idaho Larry from the photo file. After selling a few buttons to some sharp-eyed collectors, the incorrect button sale was halted.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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