Stu Bykofsky: Stu needs a dinner date: Barack, Biden, McCain or Palin?

"IF YOU WERE given a choice," my friend DeCeglie asked, "would you rather have an off-the-record dinner with Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden or Sarah Palin?"

Before I answer, stop and think about whom you would like to dine with - and why.

I'll wait for you. I'll sing to kill time.

For once in my life I have someone who needs me

Someone I've needed so

long . . .

Ready yet?

For once, unafraid, I can go where life leads me

Somehow I know I'll be strong . . .

My response to DeCeglie was, "Who's buying?

"McCain's got the deepest pockets [I smell porterhouse at Ruth's Chris], thanks to his beer-baroness wife, while Obama probably would order up deep-dish pizza from his Chicago home, or a roast-pig luau to honor his birthplace. I don't eat pork, and his wife Michelle probably wouldn't leave him alone with me anyway."

Via e-mail from Thailand, where he is an American expatriate (a fancy word meaning someone who hated Bush enough to flee the country and open a pad-thai stand), DeCeglie asks me to be serious.

OK. The answer is easy.

Neither Obama nor McCain. I already know them better than the cellulite on my ass. Obama would keep grabbing the server to change his order in the hope his next choice would be better. McCain, he'd be wanting to "reform" the menu and guilt me out by saying he ate rat on a stick in the Hanoi Hilton. Then he'd order something . . . soft.

With Joe Biden, I wouldn't get a word in edgewise. I'm scared of him. Have you seen his teeth? It's like "Jaws" when he smiles. He'd order a lot of stuff loaded with fiber.

That leaves Palin, you betcha, who'd go for caribou kabob and salmon filet. For her comfort level, we'd eat at the Ugly Moose in Manayunk and we'd talk about Alaska, because I've been there. She's been to the Irish Pub, so we're even.

I sure know she wouldn't make me feel inadequate about my education. She could tell me how shooting wolves from airplanes is "sport," and I could tell her that from my many travels, I've learned what you find in foreign countries is . . . foreigners!

I'd also tell her that a lot of people, such as I, don't despise people who are religious, such as she. I'd tell her that the scurrilous stories about her (plus faked photos) on the Internet disgust fair-minded people. During dinner, I'd secretly count how many times she says "doggone it." She might count how many times I say, "Fuhgeddaboudit."

I'd tell her that I won't vote for McCain because, while he's a "reformer," he's also a "deregulator," a philosophy that, golly gee, set the table for the Wall Street meltdown. That debt will ride us like donkeys for decades. On the whole, I don't like his policies. I'm voting for Obama even though I'm lukewarm about his experience and his grit, not to mention some of his off-the-wall pals.

I'd say all this in a civil tone, and I'd let her order the dessert we would split. Baked Alaska, maybe?

I'd let her tell me about snow-machining, hunting, fighting the fat cats and what it was like being thrust on a national stage before she was ready for it. I'd ask her if she would prefer to shoot or strangle Katie Couric.

Dinner would be more fun than an Anchorage fish fry.

So, whom would you want to dine with, and why? It's a question you can try around your own dinner table. (Hide the knives first.)