There's been a lot of talk lately about a "dream ticket" -- of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama being running mates.

The talk is coming mainly from just one side -- the Clinton camp. And even though Obama is ahead, in both popular vote and delegate count, the Clinton supporters want her to have the top spot. They are urging Obama to run for vice president.

Former President Bill Clinton, his wife's most prominent supporter, can't contain his enthusiasm for the Clinton-Obama idea. He said the ticket would be "almost unstoppable." And he explained that Obama "would win the urban areas and the upscale voters and she wins the traditional rural areas that we lost when President Reagan was president. If you put these two things together, you'd have an almost unstoppable force."

What is most perplexing is that the Clintons and their surrogates have said that Obama lacks the experience to be an effective commander in chief. And now they're promoting Obama to be vice president! What's happened to their doubts about Obama being a good commander in chief? How can you knock the guy one day and promote him to understudy to the commander in chief the next day?

Obama says it's premature to discuss the vice presidency now. He is concentrating on winning the presidential nomination. But his opponent's supporters don't agree. At a time when they are still running behind Obama in primaries and caucuses, they want to make a deal that would be quite favorable to their side.

Michael Goodwin in the Daily News calls this chutzpah. To offer your opponent the lesser job when you haven't won the major position certainly comes within the definition of chutzpah contained in Leo Rosten's Yiddish dictionary: "gall, brazen nerve ... guts."

If he hadn't realized it, Obama can understand now that he's embroiled in a battle with a political dream team, Hillary and Bill. Will he be able to keep his cool in the face of such blandishments as an offer to take the second spot on the national ticket?

When are the two potential dream candidates going to tell voters how they stand, with specifics, on such issues as the threat of recession, health care, the war in Iraq? These questions, and others, have greater relevance at the moment than who's going to run for vice president.

It's chutzpah, pure chutzpah, to put political manipulations ahead of the interests of the people.