Vice President Paul Ryan?

OK, I wasn't really paying attention this morning, but Meet the Press was on while I read the paper, handled emails and ate breakfast. (Hey, it's called multi-tasking, even if you do it in pj's.)

And then MTP morphed into Capital Gang, bringing back all the old panelists (minus Pat Buchanan, who quit to run for president in 1992): Mark Shields, Al Hunt, Kate O'Beirne, Margaret Carlson and everybody's favorite villain (and CIA spy snitch), Bob Novak.

A discussion about who will win the nomination turned naturally into who will John McCain choose as a running mate? What chance does Mike Huckabee have, in other words?

Novak dismissed Huckabee's chances totally, ("Absolutely not.") and rattled off a couple of people he thinks John McCain, R-AZ, the presumed Republican nominee -- he now has 903 of the necessary 1,191 delegates for the nomination -- might choose.

"They don't have any idea, but I'll make a prediction ... somebody who will really not be on the A-list," Novak said.

"One would be former Congressman, former trade representative, former budget director Rob Portman ... from Ohio."

And suddenly there it was, out of Darth Vader's mouth straight to my unprotected ears:

"Another would be a younger Congressman, ranking Republican on the budget committee and a tax cutter, Paul Ryan. Somebody like that, who would be younger than McCain, which isn't hard to find, and somebody who would be much more regular on taxes than McCain."

That's all I heard. My brain completely shut down, the CHECK ENGINE LIGHT blinked for half an hour and I missed the rest of the program.

But the video is HERE on MSNBC's website (after a 30-second Boeing commercial.)

For the record, McCain is 71; Ryan, R-WI, 1st District, is 38 -- just three years past the minimum age eligible to be elected president.