If Obama loses he will have something which, if he wins, he will lose and never be able to recover.

An observation from a discussion, here at Meadhouse, about what the Obamas, Michelle and Barack, will do after he is out of office. What set off the discussion was this news story about Michelle Obama going on the TV show "Top Chef" and judging a competition about school lunches. She'll be around forever — won't she? — doing things about kids and health and food. Women's TV. Books for women. The traditional woman gig. (It's for liberals too.)

And Barack? He'll be fine. He'll do analysis. Distanced observation. Comfort and critique. I say. Meade says: "Not if he loses." At which point I said what I've got quoted there in the post title. You see what it is, of course.

If he loses,  he can run for President again. He was the first black President, and now he can be the second 2-non-consecutive-terms President, after Grover Cleveland. I picture him going on "Sesame Street," talking to Grover about Grover Cleveland and teaching the kids in TV about the constitutional law of presidential term limits and about how sometimes you get knocked down, but you get back up.

"A Top Chef... whose default personality is not 'adorably half-asleep' (Harold, Stephanie) or 'kind of an asshole' (Hung, Ilan, soon-to-be Stefan)."

The case for Carla:

She has a spirit animal, she claims to be a former model, she yells "Hootie!" in public a lot, and her impression of a tortoise is unrivaled. She's fantastic. And not in a contrived, I'm-trying-so-hard-to-be-a-reality-show-personality kind of way, which is what I suspect of Fabio most of the time. I think Carla's genuinely like that....

Of course, everyone loves Carla's personality, but it's not Top Person. It's not even "Top Pussy," as Fabio said yesterday, explaining why he wasn't going to stop in the middle of a challenge to go to the hospital because he broke his pinkie finger. And anyway, if we're voting with our hearts, I ♥ Fabio. Cooking, in pain... that was hot.