Barack Obama’s announcement of his VP choice could come any day now. With the Olympics starting on Friday, and ending the weekend before the start of the Democratic convention, this coming week seems like an opitune time for him to announce. Further, it would end John McCain’s silly tantums, at least in the press’s eyes, as they will have something new to report on.
So who will it be?
The press has been talking up the following names:
Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Hagel, Wesley Clark, Tim Kaine, Sam Nunn, Ed Rendell, Bill Richardson, Kathleen Sebelius, Jack Reed, Chris Dodd
The political prediction markets and buzz have four candidates on the short short list: Evan Bayh, Tim Kaine, Joe Biden and Kathleen Sebelius.
Those is what the conventional wisdom says, but I think it is wrong.
And Sean at FiveThrtyEight concurs:
For my own gut sense, I have never been comfortable with the conventional wisdom surrounding Obama’s VP pick. There’s something nagging about it, and no hard numbers to support my feeling. Perhaps it’s the “think different” approach to many aspects of the campaign – the next-level social networking, the unprecedented 50-state massive organizer approach, the generalized no-leak culture among decision-makers, etc. It strikes me that in multiple important key ways, the Obama campaign has made conscious departures from the conventional wisdom norm.
There are many angles from which to approach who Obama will chose. If you are looking for “reinforcment,” the candidates seem to be Sebelius and Kaine. If you are looking for some to balance out Obama’s supposed weaknesses as a candidate, it seems the candidates for that are Clark, Biden, Hagel, and Nunn.
In the blogosphere, the conventional wisdom, as opposed to the Washington pundit conventional wisdom, is that Obama needs to pick someone who reinforces his core message of change rather than worrying about using the pick to allay people’s fears about his lack of national security experience. They point to Bill Clinton picking Al Gore to reinforce his own strengths. But I have never been a fan of these categories. For it seems many are overlapping. For example, one of Obama’s weaknesses is that he lacks executive experience. So is picking Sebelius or Kaine a reinforcing choice or a balancing choice? Or can it be both?
Indeed, when Clinton picked Gore, he was also balancing the ticket between a small state Governor with no Washington experience with a Senator in Gore with tons of Washington experience.
And then there is the thought of geographical balance and the notion that the VP should pick you up a state you would not carry on your own.
So what factors is Obama considering? Who will he choose and why?
My thoughts are that first, that Obama is not going to pick someone new that requires introduction to the country. He will pick a known steady hand, like Clinton did, like Dukakis did, like Carter did. Obama already has to fight the meme that he is too young and too new and too risky. He does not have to fight that battle twice with his VP Pick. So I think Kaine and Sebelius, or the more unknown Senators like Jack Reed or Evan Bayh are out of consideration.
So that leaves us with a different list, which, let’s say for argument, looks like this: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Wesley Clark, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, and Sam Nunn.
How can you say he could be considering a Washington insider??? Isn’t he about change?
Yes, he is about change. He will still be the Presidential nominee, and his campaign will still be about changing what is wrong with Washington. But his VP choice will be about reassurance. Much like George W. Bush’s choice of Dick Cheney was about reassurance. Indeed, if you recall the summer of 2000, the same uncertainty surrounded Bush’s resume and experience, and the same up in the air speculation and uncertainty about his VP pick existed. No one knew who Bush was going to pick, and no one knew what kind of VP he was going to pick. No one knew what the right VP strategy was for Bush. And then he went with Cheney as a reassurance, and campaigned on his own as Bush.
Further, Obama has not said the line he used in the primary against Hillary for some time, and that is: “are we just going to keep sending the same people to Washington and expect a different result?”
He is not using that argument against McCain, even though I think he should. So the absence of that line tells me that the next Vice President of the United States will be:
Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
And there is a good chance that he will shock the world and pick Hillary too. In fact, I think it is now more likely he will pick Hillary than it is that he will pick anyone else but Biden. I put her ahead of Kaine and Sebelius too.