political trivia again

[calimac]

It's called Anglophilia when Americans have it about Britain ... I'm not sure what it's called when it's the other way around ... but here's a column about the weight of the U.S. in British politics, with this little game-playing anecdote:

Daniel Finkelstein, once William Hague’s chief political adviser and now a distinguished columnist, has a game he plays with Andrew Cooper, David Cameron’s director of strategy, the object of which is to name, starting with the most recent, as many losing vice-presidential candidates as you can. So: Palin, Edwards, Lieberman, Kemp, Quayle, Bentsen, Ferraro, Mondale… struggling?… Dole, Shriver, Muskie, Miller… most politicos have given up by now, but Cooper and Finkelstein storm on, or rather backwards, into the Fifties.

About which I can be terribly condescending, because it's at least a century before my offhand memory starts to go spotty on this quintessentially trivial list, to which I am eagerly looking forward to adding the name of Ryan.