The Obama campaign logo is among the 72 contenders for this year’s People’s Design Award, a project of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Voting, which is open to the public, now has the mark in fourth place, well ahead of John McCain’s logo. When I logged on, the Republican’s entry appeared just beside the technological wonder he claims to have invented — the BlackBerry. 

Likewise, politics dominates the finalists in the American Society of Magazine Editors’ “Cover of the Year” contest.

Despite McCain hurling the “celebrity” epithet at Obama (ironically, while at the same time, FEC records show the Republican paying $5,500 to the American Idol makeup artist for services rendered), neither men make the best celebrity covers. Of the 27 best covers across all categories, McCain and Obama together grace one, a New York magazine cover showing a photoshopped version of the pair on a beach. Obama is featured on two others, one for TIME and another for the New Yorker, which renders in ink Obama in bed beside Hillary Clinton awaiting the dreaded “3 a.m. call.”

Other political entries: The classic New Yorker cover showing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a Larry Craig-esque bathroom stall game of tap-tap. Getting three finalist nods is New York magazine’s cover showing sex-scandal-plagued former Gov. Eliot Spitzer. An arrow pointing to his crotch ends, in Barbara Kruger’s trademark red and white, with a single, stout word: “BRAIN.”