About that car magnet . . . .

Journalists are starting to point to Hildebrand Tewes Consulting, the low-key firm that ran Barack Obama's phenomenally effective campaign, as one of last night's unsung victors. I wholeheartedly agree that the campaign was first-rate and that it seemed, from the outside at least, to have been refreshingly devoid of egotism, conflict, and chaos (unlike, apparently, that of New York State's junior senator).

However, there is the small matter of my car magnet. I gave $15.00 to the campaign in September (my first-ever donation to a political campaign), I was promised a car magnet. When I gave another $15.00 to the campaign during the following month, I was again promised a car magnet. I waited and waited, and my car magnet finally arrived in the mail on October 27.

When I got home from work today, another car magnet was waiting in my mailbox. Not exactly a display of fearsome efficiency.

I don't blame Hildebrand Tewes, which no doubt farmed out the car magnet operation to a third party, and I wonder whether the unprecedented number of donations the campaign received this fall caused problems: maybe they ran out of car magnets, or maybe folks living in battleground states got pushed to the head of the car magnet line while everyone living in safe states (New York State was called about one minute after its polls closed) waited.

Hey, at least I've got a pristine magnet with its original envelope. Given the market in political ephemera, I'm planning to hang onto it for a decade or two.