US:BARACK OBAMA has promised to reveal his choice of vice-presidential running-mate in a text message to supporters before a joint appearance in Springfield, Illinois tomorrow and before the media hears the news.
This pledge and the Obama campaign's legendary, leak-free discipline has not stopped the press from plunging into a frenzy of speculation about the identity of the nominee, most of it based on nothing more substantial than reading tea leaves.
For much of this week, Delaware senator Joe Biden was the favourite, despite the fact that he told reporters "I'm not the guy", adding that he knew no more than they did. When Indiana senator Evan Bayh's wife got her hair done the other day, the frenzy shifted to Indianapolis.
Meanwhile, as the presidential race has tightened, some pundits are persuaded that only one vice-presidential pick can save Mr Obama - his former rival Hillary Clinton, who was campaigning yesterday on his behalf in Florida.
Each of the putative front-runners would bring added value to the Democratic ticket. Mr Biden is his party's leading foreign policy expert and Mr Bayh could help Mr Obama to wrest an important state from the Republicans.
In an interview with Time magazine yesterday, Mr Obama said he hoped his choice of a running-mate would tell American citizens something about the kind of president he would be. "That I think through big decisions. I get a lot of input from a lot of people, and that ultimately, I try to surround myself with people who are about getting the job done, and who are not about ego, self-aggrandisement, getting their names in the press, but our focus on what's best for the American people," he said.
For many Washington tea leaf readers, that ruled out Mr Biden, who finds it difficult to pass a microphone without speaking into it and boosted the chances of Mr Bayh, one of the most self-effacing members of the US Senate.