Obama VP name game: back to the future

Who is Tim Kaine again? Evan Bayh? How do you pronounce it - buy, bay, byeh? Would you recognize their faces in a crowd? Do you know anything about them? Me neither. At least not until recently.

Every four years wild, erroneous reporting fuels the 'Veepstakes' guessing game:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28118-2004Mar3.html
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle+articleid_2479906&title=Looks_Like.html

I can't believe a smart guy like Barack would actually pick a 'no-name' running mate - given that he is technically still a n00b and his opponent has been a household name-brand pwner for decades: http://www.mahalo.com/John_mccain_scandals

There is a simple reason two family names have occupied the whitehouse for the last 20 years - it has little to do with campaigns or policy - and everything to do with name recognition.

So, I climbed into my my Delorean, traveled back a few years, and conducted a broad cross-section poll to determine what percentage of Americans were even vaguely familiar with the following names or faces before the current campaign season:

Evan Bayh: less than 1%
Tim Kaine: less than 2%
Sam Nunn: less than 3%
Kathleen Sebelius: less than 2%
Chuck Hagel: less than 10%
Joe Biden: more than 65%

Barack Obama: less than 2%
John McCain: more than 65%

*Polling excludes residents from the same state as the elected official. Imaginary margin of error +/- 4.7%

The correct VP choice is pretty frikin obvious - don't believe the hype.