When picking a VP, both parties face hurdles
Editor's Note: This is the second post by Voxant Guest Blogger Ed Grefe. To learn more about the author and read his last post, click here.
- Evan McMorris-Santoro, Senior Editor
FDR VP John Nance Gardner’s said of the job: It has no more
value than “a warm bucket of spit.” Today that is not the case. Both parties
face unique challenges in the selection process despite the notion that the top
of the ticket gets to pick his/her own running mate.
To begin, my surmise is that the VP nominee will be under
closer scrutiny than at any other time in history. We now have the example of a
former VP who has won a Nobel peace prize. We are about to have an ex-VP who
has shown us how a combination eminence grise-Rasputin-Cardinal Richelieu-Machiavelli
can subvert democracy and lead us down a dark road, whose only joy seems to be
in the constant use of
Nobel’s products – gun powder.
The problems faced by each Party are different.
For the Democrats, Bill Clinton is cited as saying a Clinton-Obama ticket would be an "almost unstoppable force." Immovable is a better word. Assuming Hillary gets the nomination who in their right mind wants to be Number 3 in the country? Unlike Nance, her VP’s bucket would be filled with something warm but probably closer to that which one gets when substituting another letter for the “p” in “spit.”
And why on earth would Obama pick Clinton? People point to 1960 and Kennedy-Johnson as an example of how two pols make peace to win, but that is a misreading of factors (including Johnson’s mindset) at the time.
At the time Kennedy reached out to his rival for the presidential nomination, Johnson was Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate. His hold on power in that role was unlike anyone prior to or since who has held that office – a fact well-documented in the book, Master of the Senate. As Caro notes, LBJ thought he could still retain the power in the Senate as VP that he’d enjoyed as Majority Leader. When he first tried to exercise his old authority he was more than gently reminded by his former colleagues that he had forever lost all of his legislative power.
Obama can do better with someone not so divisive or with someone
whose family attachments upstage his presidency on a daily basis. Another woman,
perhaps a Hispanic leader - anyone who can help heal a nation longing for a
total repeal of the Bush-Cheney years.
The Republican problem is challenging in a different way. McCain is the accidental candidate of the GOP so far as many conservatives are concerned. These right wing folks see McCain as the heir apparent, and they may be less kind to McCain than they were to Ford in 1968, insisting that Ford dump Rockefeller and replace him with Dole as the price Ford had to pay to keep the nomination from going to Reagan.
Which brings us to the question – Where’s Malcolm Wilson now
that we need him? It’s one both parties may end up asking as they assemble to
make their decisions.
Malcolm Wilson was a true and faithful public servant – so loyal and dedicated and so self-effacing that he was elected and re-elected overwhelmingly statewide by the voters of New York State to be Nelson Rockefeller’s Lieutenant Governor. To even suggest he was a shadow of Rockefeller would be to acknowledge that Nelson allowed some light to actually shine in such a way as to cast a reflection. He didn’t.
When Rockefeller handed over his office in 1973 to the man
who had loyally served him for 15 years, most Empire State residents said
collectively, “Malcolm who?”
So here we are – with one party having found a candidate by accident, and the other bent on seizing defeat from the jaws of victory – and the challenging question for both is who to pick as a running mate. For the Democrats the challenge is personal but the fog now engulfing their presidential civil war mutes any early suggestions. Should Hillary concede, her concession will probably carry with it the demand that she name the Veep nominee, no doubt someone who will not overshadow her ambition.
For the Republicans the choice is philosophical. Might it be Bobby Jindal? For some vocal conservatives – Grover Norquist and William Kristol come to mind – the new Louisiana Governor is perfect. As a man of color he takes votes from Obama. As a colorless cipher in the national arena he remains sufficiently nondescript to avoid annoying anyone politically, the VP equivalent of a Clarence Thomas - malleable.
Norquist and Kristol are obviously thinking: Malcolm Wilson. The Dems will also.
