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TIM RUSSERT: McCain is in Arizona--here's some tape--meeting with Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts; Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana; Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida. All--there he is coming down the stairs in the gray hair. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania was in Europe. Mike Huckabee is at a wedding anniversary, didn't make the trip. But now we're in full throttle of a VP selection, Gwen.
GWEN IFILL: You know, it's such Kabuki theater. I mean, we know—and we do this every four years, where we have—you know, by the end, it's kind of the ritual. We start to think, "Okay, now, what's next? Oh, the vice presidential nomination!" And almost—who knows how much it matters at the end? But we can't help it. It's how we spend our summers every four years.
RUTH MARCUS: What else would we do?
GWEN IFILL: What else would we do? And therefore, but now they've decided this year, all--both sides, is to just strip it back and let us peek. When have you ever seen people going for serious vice presidential opportunities, walking down the stairs holding hands before with their significant others? You've just never seen that before.
"What else would we do?" isn't the appropriate question. If these journalists were responsible about their profession, they would ask, "What else could we do?" Although, if they were responsible, that's a question they wouldn't need to ask. The United States, not to mention the world, is facing so many crises right now that journalism should be just about the most important profession in the country--we need people to study and report on the various international military imbroglios, the increasingly widespread snakepits of the financial services industries, as well as the impact of trade globalization on national economies and the environment. We not only need these matters thoroughly reported on, we need them reported on in layman's terms. One would think our top journalists would want to report on this stuff; expert, substantial coverage of such grave matters could make their reputations and create their legacies. I can't imagine any journalist who takes his or her profession seriously wanting the legacy of the late Tim Russert, whose greatest accomplishment, we were soberly informed over and over and over again, was making David Duke look like a fool on national TV. I shouldn't have to break this to the likes of Chris Matthews, but Lee Atwater--in one of his few redeeming moments-- turned Duke into a universally reviled political pariah years before Russert got to humiliate him. Shooting ducks in a barrel--no matter how deserving the duck--shouldn't be a point of pride for a reasonable person. But then reasonable people wouldn't consider speculating on a Vice-President pick the most productive way to spend their time.
Ifill asks, "Who knows how much it matters at the end?" She does demonstrate some awareness with how frivolous this activity is. The Vice-Presidency is an all-but-worthless office in Constitutional terms; the amount of authority a Vice-President has depends on much a President wants to give him or her. George W. Bush was willing to let Dick Cheney be his version of Cardinal Richelieu, but the only use Ronald Reagan had for Bush the Elder was to send him to foreign funerals. In electoral terms, the regional appeal a Vice-Presidential pick gives a ticket is more than dubious: Lloyd Bentsen didn't win Texas for Michael Dukakis, John Edwards didn't win North Carolina for John Kerry, and if Al Gore's performance as a Presidential candidate in 2000 is any indication, Bill Clinton didn't need him to win Tennessee in 1992 and 1996.
However, there is some internal political benefit for a Presidential nominee to pick one candidate over another: it helps with outreach to political constituencies whose support the nominee may need to shore up. Walter Mondale helped Jimmy Carter to build bridges with organized labor, and the choice of Bob Dole helped mollify the Reagan-Goldwater wing of the GOP for Gerald Ford. And while Ronald Reagan didn't want George Bush the Elder on the ticket with him for a minute, he needed Bush's identification with the Republicans' moderate Rockefeller wing to keep that group behind him. He probably couldn't have defeated Carter otherwise: John Anderson, a prominent Rockefeller Republican, threatened to split the party when he chose to run as an independent candidate in the general election.
These outreach efforts can backfire, though. Al Gore tried to assuage the political press's hatred of him by choosing Joe Lieberman, and he ended up with an albatross of a running mate who undermined the ticket with his public sympathy for GOP positions. I don't think any Gore supporter who saw Lieberman's non-debate debate with Dick Cheney ("I agree with my opponent about this, and I agree with my opponent about that") was anything short of appalled. And as Bob Somerby has amply documented over at The Daily Howler, Lieberman's presence couldn't keep the press from slandering Gore at every opportunity. There are reasons why Lieberman's own Presidential bid was dead on arrival with Democratic voters in 2004, and Gore's refusal to endorse his candidacy is telling.
If the Vice-Presidential choice offers anything of value to voters, it's this: it tells us how candidates think, and where their priorities are. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan demonstrated their pragmatism with their choices, and Michael Dukakis and John Kerry demonstrated their cluelessness with theirs. (Lloyd Bentsen was the only bright spot in Dukakis's campaign, but choosing him for his regional appeal was foolish.) As for Al Gore, he revealed what a political muddle his thinking was in, and George Bush the Elder's choice of Dan Quayle revealed his need for an unthreatening bootlicker of the sort that he had been for virtually his entire political career.
George W. Bush's choice of Dick Cheney was more interesting. The selection of Cheney signalled to anyone who was paying attention that Dubya had no interest in the practical responsibilities of the Presidency. Cheney's own Presidential ambitions were no secret, but everyone knew he was too unpleasant a personality to ever hope of winning at the top of the ticket. But with his background (White House chief of staff, member of the House GOP leadership, Secretary of Defense), Cheney's knowledge of how Washington and the executive branch worked were probably unsurpassed; if there was anyone who could orchestrate a situation where he would be, so to speak, the power behind the throne, it was Cheney. The relationship between him and Dubya was obvious. After Dubya chose him to head the campaign's Vice-Presidential selection process, Cheney selected himself, and Dubya went along with him. The episode demonstrated Dubya lacked independence of mind, and that he was easily manipulated. Cheney made it clear to one and all that Dubya was putty in his hands.
Dubya's choice of Cheney told us volumes, and none of it good. Bill Clinton's choice of Al Gore, on the other hand, told us a lot of what was best about him. Gore had his problems in 2000, but in general, he's a dynamic, forward-minded, and independent figure. By choosing Gore, Clinton made it clear that he wanted the best people around him: those who took the initiative, thought outside the box, and were willing to give him advice regardless of how they thought he might take it. And it was always clear that Gore was subordinate to him. Clinton's goal was to run the federal government as well as it could be run, and to promote substantial innovations in the private sector in order to expand opportunity. Gore's expertise was invaluable to this pursuit. In office, Bill Clinton succeeded brilliantly: few have anything but praise for the ability of the people he chose to work under him, and he presided over the greatest, most egalitarian peacetime economic expansion the country had ever seen. He was as good a President as we could ever hope to have, and the choice of Al Gore signalled what was to come.
If Obama wants to pick the equivalent of Al Gore as his Vice-President, his choice would be either Wesley Clark or Hillary Clinton. Thanks to Cheney and his dimwit cadre of neocon fabulists, this country is stuck in two military quagmires, and the stupidity of the conduct towards Iran and Russia demands the insight of a Wesley Clark to help set things right. No one has a more profound understanding of the ins and outs of war and peace, and his exemplary handling of the Balkan situation as NATO commander demonstrated he understands them in practice. Hillary Clinton would signal a commitment to getting domestic policy back on the right track. She has an almost preternatural grasp of policy issues and details--it's easily the most comprehensive in Washington--and she makes a point of understanding them in practical terms. She's not about telling people how to live their lives; her goal is to figure out how to help people live those lives better. Both Hillary and Clark know when to lead, anf they know when to follow. They're the best minds the country has to offer, and they can subordinate themselves to Obama's general goals. In pragmatic terms, they are best suited to help him define them specifically.
But if the press speculation is halfway accurate, it'll be either Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, or Tim Kaine. Superficially, Biden might seem like the best choice of the three, but if he's picked, all I think it will do is signal how much Obama's in over his head. The first thing a Vice-Presidential candidate needs to be is a team player, and that's not Joe Biden. He's no one's subordinate--there's nobody in Washington more in love with the sound of their own voice--and Obama would quickly find out that he's got a loose cannon on his hands. Biden has considerable foreign policy expertise, but he has nothing to offer that he couldn't give just as effectively in the Senate. Kaine and Bayh are mediocrities--although Bayh's the more talented of the two--who have no benefit beyond possible regional appeal. And as I hope I demonstrated effectively above, regional appeal doesn't count for squat. It sounds good in theory, but it doesn't tend to work out. Picking either of them would just point up one of Obama's major weaknesses--he's too enamored with abstractions, and he doesn't approach matters in practical terms. Those choices would also highlight the insecurities one senses below Obama's surface haughtiness: he can't abide dealing with accomplished, independent-minded people in any circumstance, even when they know--as Gore, Hillary, and Clark do--when to keep it behind closed doors. My sense is that he feels belittled by them, and he resents it. My guess is that Obama will pick Kaine, partly because the Democrats have a bigger emotional stake in flipping Virginia than Indiana, and partly because he's something of a hapless figure, and thus less intimidating. The people of Virginia aren't particularly enthused with him as governor, and after his term is over--he's limited to one--there's no realistic possibility of a U.S. Senate seat opening up before 2018. He's got nowhere to go politically. From a certain standpoint, he's perfect. He needs Obama a lot more than Obama needs him.
Obama's choice may say--or confirm--everything we need to know.
As for the GOP pick, I have no idea. I tend to find Republicans so distasteful to think about these days that I really don't care.
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