Will the pundit

On the eve of this historic presidential election, it's a good time to share the activism Will has been exhibiting lately.

Friday, as we drove to Waupaca for trick or treating, we were listening to POTUS '08, an XM satellite radio station focused on the presidential election. One of the commentators mentioned Barack Obama.

"I don't think Barack Obama should be president," Will declared.

"Then who do you think should be?" we asked him.

"John McCain," he said.

"Why's that Will?"

"Because Grandma Clary said McCain should be president."

Interesting, we thought, because just days earlier Clary had told us she was an Obama lean. Before we could press him further, Will revealed some of his own polling data.

"Everyone in the whole world wants McCain to be president," he said.

"Not Mommy and Daddy," Jana said.

"Then everyone other than you two wants McCain to be president."

Jana was getting pretty worked up so we changed the subject and it didn't come up again over the weekend. Then tonight, Will brought it up again. Jana called her mom looking for some insight; turns out Clary never did say anything to Will about McCain or Obama.

When confronted with this fact, Will confessed. "I was trying to trick you," he said. Ah, more Republican election dark arts! But then it was revealed that maybe Will wasn't a part of a vast right-wing conspiracy.

"Why do you support McCain, Will?" I asked. "Is it his leadership qualities, or the fact that Joe the Plumber says Obama wants to take away his hard-earned money and redistribute it?"

"What's a plumber?" Will asked indignantly. Not Joe (at least not a licensed plumber).

Will then went on to tell us that while he thinks McCain should be the next president, Obama was our last president -- as well as our first president. "I read it in a book ... see?" The book in question was actually the biography of Wisconsin basketball coach Bo Ryan.

This Family Ties-like situation has been fun, as our little Alex P. Keaton has flustered his mother and amused his father. I hope it leads to many years of productive political discourse in our family.