This morning, Politico’s Jonathan Martin described the intrigue over who will be our next Vice President as “breathless.” How breathless?

“The VP story is a little bit like sex,” observes Tucker Carlson, the writer and NBC political analyst who falls into the skeptic column. “When it’s happening, you’re totally focused on it, it’s all you want. Then, the second it’s over, you can barely remember why it seemed so important.”

That’s pretty breathless. And completely mentally scarring.

But the overall point still remains: with two unusual candidates about to face off for the presidency, who will they pick as their ultimate surrogate? Someone who accentuates their attributes, or someone who fills in their perceived weaknesses? Someone well known to politics, or someone slightly off the map?

These are all important questions to take into consideration when your life spirals to the point of engaging in MSNBC’s Veepstakes ‘o8!. Set up to mimic an NCAA playoffs bracket (and thus make you feel less crushingly sad for participating in it), internet political animals of all stripes can now make meaningless, semi-informed guesses about who John McCain’s running-mate will be.

Mitt Romney? David Petraeus? Securities and Exchange Chairman Chris Cox? Only you can decide.

But not really.