So Hillary Clinton wants Barack Obama to be her vice president. Isn't that nice of her to offer? Never mind, as Obama pointed out on March 10 in Mississippi, that he has won twice as many states as Clinton, leads her in the popular vote, and is ahead of her in the delegate count.

"I don't know how someone in second place can offer the vice presidency to someone in first place," Obama said.

That's a very sensible reaction, but of course, this is not about either of them realistically becoming the other's pick for the second spot on the Democratic ticket. It's about, as always, number one. Clinton wants to be seen as the winner magnanimously handing out a silver medal. Obama wants to remind you that he currently has the gold.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the hollowness of all this, and of Clinton's gambit in particular, very clear when she told a Boston television station: "The Clinton administration has fairly ruled [Obama as VP] out by proclaiming that Senator McCain would be a better commander in chief than Obama." That's very correct. The Clinton campaign has been relentlessly questioning Obama's qualifications, so much so that one sometimes gets the feeling it would rather, if Clinton can't win, see a President McCain. All of which creates a situation wherein, despite and because of her talking points, it becomes logically consistent for Clinton to ask Obama to be her VP.

But don't get too distracted. This VP chatter is just that: chatter. Neither will be the other's vice president. Obama doesn't want to be the next Al Gore, and Clinton doesn't want to be second-in-command again. However, if short-term interests (such as creeping up in tracking polls) dictate that each of them should seem open to having the other in the second spot, they're willing to go there.

More relevant, in the long run, is the qualifications discussion that the Clinton campaign has opened up with its attacks on Obama's fitness to be commander in chief. The discussion so far has chronicled Obama's relative lack of foreign-policy experience compared to, say, McCain (though not to, say, Bill Clinton during his first run for the presidency). But it is also just beginning to spark renewed interest in Clinton's claims that she "helped bring peace to Northern Ireland," dodged bullets in Bosnia, and negotiated to open the Kosovo borders.

So far we've learned that no less an authority than Nobel Prize winner Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, who did help bring peace to Northern Ireland, thinks Clinton's claims are "silly"; that the Kosovo border opening in question actually occurred the day before Clinton arrived for a visit as First Lady; and that the comedian Sinbad strongly disputes Clinton's claims about Bosnia.

This last one is, of course, the most entertaining installment in the fight, with Sinbad, who was along with Clinton on the trip as part of a USO mission, telling the Washington Post: "I think the only red-phone moment was: 'Do we eat here or the next place?'"