Obama Veep Announcement Soon?

The Obama campaign, clearly in an attempt to assist my fledgling blogging efforts, has just sent me an email with the following crazy offer:

Barack Obama is about to make one of the most important decisions of this campaign -- choosing a running mate.

You have helped build this movement from the bottom up, and Barack wants you to be the first to know his choice.

Sign up today to be the first to know:

http://my.barackobama.com/vp

You will receive an email the moment Barack makes his decision, or you can text VP to 62262 to receive a text message on your mobile phone.

Once you've signed up, please forward this email to your friends, family, and coworkers to let them know about this special opportunity.

No other campaign has done this before. You can be part of this important moment.

This is could be either just a shameless ploy to draw hits (and thus potential donors) to the site, or it could be the beginning of the PR ramp-up to an announcement. If it's the former, the announcement could still come anytime in the next two weeks, but if it's the latter, we are probably looking at several days of media speculation, coupled with a steady rhetorical roll-out of the themes the new ticket is going to focus upon.

Of course the most likely explanation is that the campaign is justifiably concerned about a full week of dead air, and is looking for some way to keep the conversation from drifting onto questions about Obama's vacation at a time of domestic and international crisis, which is exactly where McCain wants to go. It would be unusual for Obama to end his vacation early to come home and make his selection, so the earliest we could reasonably see a name would be next Monday, or likelier still Tuesday. I not getting worked up quite yet.