Lou Dobbs feels that America just isn’t ready for an old white man as President. So he’ll have to take an “intermediate step”, like running against the only Hispanic in the US Senate.

Former CNN host Lou Dobbs is seriously considering running for U.S. Senate in New Jersey in 2012 as “an intermediary step” that could lead to a run for the White House.

Dobbs told former Sen. Fred Thompson’s radio program on Monday that he had been urged to run for president and would talk to some people about it.

His spokesman played down the idea. Robert Dilenschneider told The New York Times Wednesday a run for president is a “long way off.” The spokesman said there would have to be an “intermediary step,” such as the seat held by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

Menendez isn’t up for re-election until 2012, so moving from that into the 2012 Presidential race would be one hell of a step!

I guess the first step for the kinder, gentler Lou Dobbs is to completely betray the policy he’s advocated for a decade by claiming to favor a path to citizenship for undocumented workers, which he announced to some skepticism on Telemundo this week.

As for the likelihood of Dobbs taking a job held by a Hispanic and turning it into one a “real American” should hold… well, in a head-to-head matchup my money would be on Spill O’Reilly.