The hottest teamup! So yummy together!

That’s not me talking. She’s a 30-year-old, married, with child, with no ideology or politicology whatsoever. She’s just going by her gut. But when she says Gibo Teodoro and Edu Manzano are hot because they’re intelligent, competent and capable, and definitely good-looking, she and they are in trouble. Some people don’t like intelligent or competent or capable. Good-looking they understand, but the rest--?

Gibo, presidential candidate who’s lagging in the surveys, and Edu, his newly picked runningmate, are the team to watch. They’re also the youngest. Gibo has been described as “crisp” by an image maker of John Robert Powers school of poise. That one word speaks volumes. Fresh. Confident. Unsoiled. Bright and eager. You wish his handlers could be as adept in putting a handle on the impression he wants and needs to project.

Instead, they are nowhere near the mark, coming up with print and TV ads that do not do justice to their candidate’s sterling qualities as a man whose brain and talents – “Galing at Talino” in Tagalog – are the kind of resources this young nation should mine for the next six years.

Edu, game ka na ba? His handler, the veteran Reli German, has always been able to spot a winner.

In 1965, he packaged Ferdinand Marcos. But in 1986, he worked for the woman who ousted him, Cory Aquino. He joined the Erap Estrada campaign in 1998, inventing most of the jokes that catapulted Erap to the presidency.

Two years later, he helped another woman, Gloria M. Arroyo, unseat her predecessor.

As Mr. German told “Bulong Pulungan” at Sofitel last Tuesday, the surveys showing Mr. Teodoro with a 4 percent rating should not bother his supporters. “You must remember, in 2004 pollsters gave FPJ 42 percent and GMA 8 percent. Yes, there’s plenty of time to catch up.”

Being young men, Genuine Ilocano and Genuine Ilonggo, the bar topnotcher and the civil engineer with a US Air Force asterisk in his c.v., can run fast enough to catch up. They have energy, dynamism, well-toned bodies and matinee-idol looks. Let’s hope their campaign projects imagination and sparkle – make it crisp!