Sing Out, Hillary! .. 'Desperate Housewives' Reboot? Maybe.

"I'M NOT gonna give advice to Romney. But a presidential candidate has a great responsibility to America to pick someone who is well fitted to the role. I think John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin is the single most irresponsible act of government I can remember."

So said LBJ biographer Robert Caro to Time magazine when asked: "What advice would you give to Mitt Romney in looking for a running mate?"

Huh! Angry Democrats and delighted Republicans might suggest...Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who, some think, will never dig himself out of the hole he blasted last Sunday on "Meet the Press."

• DIDJA KNOW that on the Saturday night of the recent epic NATO heads of nations get together in Chicago, our wonderful Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, went to a baseball game because she wasn't busy, for a change. The Chicago Cubs and White Socks were playing their annual cross-town series. Hillary is a self-proclaimed Cubs fan.

The Secretary sat in the box of Cubs chairman Joe Ricketts. Many VIPs were on hand at Wrigley Field, including Senator Dick Durbin, Gov. Pat Quinn, Obama strategist David Axelrod.

There was talk that the the Cubs were so delighted to have the Secretary of State that they tried to talk her into a 7th inning stretch leading of (no, not the "Star-Spangled Banner") but "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

• I was at the gala Literacy Partners fundraiser on a rainy night outside Jazz@lincolncenter when I heard this little bit of gossip from a Chicago native who used to own a ballclub himself. He reminded me that Hillary Clinton grew up not far from Chicago and has always been a Windy City kind of girl and what's more, she loves baseball. He insists she did sing! (I hope so. Being an international diplomat all the time can't be much fun.)

Not so incidentally, I will just say that the Literacy event was a tiny bit nerve-wracking because our first reader, Bill Maher, needed to get on with it because he had a plane to catch. He was peaches and cream sweet about it all and we are very beholden to this big star of HBO. Guests took away his his hit book, "The New New Rules."

Jeff Toobin of CNN, who has "The Oath" coming this summer and Sally Bedell Smith of the best-selling "The Queen" read for us after Maher.

• LET ME simply say congratulations to the philanthropist Lisa Schiff who has turned jazz@lincolncenter off Columbus Circle, into a new venue for charities and parties to go. What she has done has made the Rose Room one of the most glamourous, happiest and most convenient party places in New York. She says now she is going to hang up her gloves and quit, but I hope she can be talked out of it.

• ABC's "Desperate Housewives" was still performing well on Sunday nights, when cancellation crabgrass overtook Wisteria Lane. And Disney really wanted the show to continue. But producer Marc Cherry and all the ladies felt they'd given their best, and didn't want to drag the series out, and jump any sharks, so to speak. It had, after all, run eight seasons.

But hear this. "DH" could return, rebooted with a slightly younger cast. Some insist that Cherry will wait a year and then come back with a "funnier" batch of housewives. Cherry used to write for "The Golden Girls" and misses exercising his comedy chops.)

Names being tossed around include Minka Kelly (best known as Derek Jeter's girlfriend) and--get this! -- Bristol Palin! Cherry had attempted to lure Mama Sarah onto "Housewives" a couple of seasons back, to no avail. But Bristol, who impressed some folks at ABC during her "Dancing with the Stars" stint, could have a role in the new "DH" if it comes to pass.

Cherry, it is said, would like to have some of the original housewives--Teri Hatcher, Marcia Cross--visit occasionally. Hatcher has her own ABC sitcom brewing and she is also super-dedicated to a career as a chanteuse, so getting her might not be so easy.