Opinion: Obama’s Super Bowl party: Chips, dip and one Republican

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Today is Super Bowl XLIV and so President XLIV of the United States is having a few folks over to the White House to eat and drink and maybe watch.

What a numerical coincidence!

And in the spirit of Barack Obama’s professed bipartisanship, the Democrat has invited one Republican to join the crowd witnessing Indianapolis win another National Football League championship. (UPDATE: Oops.)

He’s Joseph Cao, the first Vietnamese American in Congress. He won last year’s special election to fill the vacancy created by the conviction of Democrat Rep. William ‘Doesn’t Everyone Keep $90,000 in the Freezer?’ Jefferson.

That congressional district is in, tah dah, New Orleans, which sent a team to the Super Bowl this year, even though it’s in Miami.

Cao, like his party of Lincoln in Washington, D.C., these days, will be in a distinct minority at the gathering of 16 Democrats from the House, Senate and Obama’s Cabinet. Vice President Joe Biden is not in Delaware this weekend; he went to Colorado instead for no announced public events.

Presumably, they’ll be able to get through all the snow that fell on the nation’s capitol this weekend (Ticket photo gallery here.)

The White House press office said an unspecified number of unidentified Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families would also attend the television-watching event.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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