A breathless world waits to know: What's on Barack Obama's iPod?

According to Rolling Stone (which has the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on its cover again this coming week), Obama is a big Stevie Wonder fan - but also has a lot of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Jay-Z in rotation, as well as "everything from Howlin’ Wolf to Yo-Yo Ma to Sheryl Crow."

As someone who believes that there is no line between politics and pop culture - that, as Nick Hornby said in High Fidelity, "what really matters is what you like, not what you are like" - I should be the last one saying this, but how shallow has our political discourse become if we're asking what a candidate listens to on his iPod?

Of course, this isn't the lowest level of trivialization - and neither was the "boxers or briefs" question asked of Bill Clinton in 1992. After all, nobody actually based their vote on that answer. (Whether he kept his boxers or briefs on at crucial moments of his life was another issue.)

The low point was in 2004, when people looked at George W. Bush and John Kerry, and voted for Bush because he was "someone I could sit and have a beer with." Since the odds that you will ever get to sit and have a beer with your president are pretty low (unless you're a lobbyist who donated vast sums to his campaign fund), shouldn't you be more worried that your president (whether Republican or Democrat) stay sober and concentrated on the world's problems - so you and your friends can relax and have a few beers?

Labels: Barack Obama, politics