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May 29 - June 4, 2008
My first thought on the running mate question is that to balance his ticket, Barack Obama should pick a really old white general. Therefore, he should pick Dwight Eisenhower. John McCain, on the other hand, needs to pick someone younger than himself. Therefore, he also should pick Dwight Eisenhower. My second thought is that most of the commentary on vice president picks is completely backward. Most discussion focuses on what state or constituency this or that running mate could help carry in the fall. But, as a rule, recent vice presidential nominees haven’t had any effect on key states or constituencies. They haven’t had much effect on elections at all, except occasionally as hapless distractions. A vice president can, however, have a gigantic impact on an administration once in office (see: Cheney, Richard). Therefore, a sensible presidential candidate shouldn’t be selecting a mate on the basis of who can help him get elected. He should be thinking about who can help him govern successfully so he can get re-elected. That means asking: What circumstances will I face when I take office? What tasks will I need my chief subordinate to perform to help me face those circumstances? If Barack Obama is elected, his chief challenge will be that he hopes to usher in a new style of politics, but he has no real strategy for how to do that. He will find himself surrounded by highly partisan Democratic politicians, committee chairmen and interest groups, thrilled to finally seize power. Some of them might have enjoyed his lofty rhetoric about change, but in practice, these organization types have no interest in changing politics. They just want to take the money and patronage that has been going to Republican special interests and give it to Democratic special interests. These entrenched Democrats are more experienced than Obama. They know how to play the game better. The effect of their efforts will be to turn his into a Potemkin administration, filled with great speeches but without great accomplishments or influence over legislation. Obama will need a vice president who knows the millions of ways power is exercised and subverted in Washington. He’ll need someone who can be a senior, authoritative presence in a Cabinet
that may range from Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel to the labor leader Andy Stern. He’ll need someone who can supervise his young reformers and build transpartisan coalitions more effectively than Obama has as senator. Sam Nunn and Tom Daschle seem to fit the bill. Nunn is one of those senior Democrats (like David Boren and Bob Kerrey) who left the Senate lamenting the dumbed-down nature of modern politics. Daschle was more partisan as majority leader, but he is still widely trusted and universally liked. Both as experienced legislators could take Obama’s lofty hopes and translate them into nitty-gritty action. If John McCain is elected, he’ll face a political culture threatening to split at the seams. In defeat, Democrats will be enraged at everything and everybody. The Republican Party will still be exhausted and divided. McCain will find it hard to staff the administration since so many Republican advisers were exhausted over the previous eight years. Amid these centrifugal forces, McCain will need somebody who radiates calm. He’ll need somebody who can provide structure and organization. He’ll need somebody who enjoys working with budgets. With the Democrats controlling Congress, McCain will have no chance of winning big, ideological fights. He will need someone who can help him de-ideologize the climate, who can emphasize making things work rather than fighting philosophical battles. McCain seems to be looking at business leaders like Meg Whitman. But among politicos, the shining stars would seem to be Rob Portman and Tim Pawlenty. Portman is an Ohioan with the mind of a budget director and a mild temperament that is a credit to his Midwestern roots. His resume is ideal: He directed legislative affairs for the first President Bush, served in Congress for more than a decade and managed the Office of Management and Budget under Bush the younger. He excelled in every role. Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota, is one of the GOP’s leading and most likable modernizers. The son of a truck driver (his mother died when he was 16), he is the godfather of Sam’s Club conservatism, the effort to reconnect the party to the needs of the working class. Pawlenty could help McCain play the Theodore Roosevelt-style role -- reforming the nation’s institutions to fit a new century and epoch. Both presidential candidates are surrounded by campaign advisers, campaign coverage and campaign frenzy. But the vice presidential pick is not really a campaign decision. It’s the first governing decision -- and a way to see who is thinking seriously about how to succeed in the White House.
On Friday morning, Sen. Joe Biden gave us an example of a leading national politician exhibiting decency and class. Later in the day, Sen. Hillary Clinton gave us an example of something else. Biden, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. He spoke insightfully about the complexity of dealing with Iran, moving the discussion beyond the tedious and simplistic argument over whether to meet with certain foreign leaders. He defended Sen. Barack Obama against the searing attacks by the Bush administration, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman, and said: “I refuse to sit back like we did in 2000 and 2004. This administration is the worst administration in American foreign policy in modern history -- maybe ever. The idea that they are competent to continue to conduct our foreign policy, to make us
more secure and make Israel secure, is preposterous. {hellip} Every single thing they’ve touched has been a near-disaster.” Biden was then asked about the dispute that Obama and McCain have been having over Sen. Jim Webb’s proposal to increase college tuition benefits for men and women who have served in the military since Sept. 11, 2001. Obama supports the bill. McCain does not and has introduced a less-generous measure of his own. When Obama criticized McCain’s position on this issue, McCain responded angrily and gratuitously mentioned that Obama had not served in the military. (This is especially weird when you consider that McCain is a fierce supporter of the war in Iraq, which was fanatically promoted by an entire barnyard of chicken hawks.) Said McCain: “I will not accept from Sen. Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lecture on my regard for those who did.” Dick Cheney never served in uniform. George Continued on Page 42
It is, in a way, almost appropriate that the final days of the struggle for the Democratic nomination have been marked by yet another fake Clinton scandal -- the latest in a long line that goes all the way back to Whitewater. This one, in case you missed it, involved an interview Hillary Clinton gave the editorial board of South Dakota’s Argus Leader, in which she tried to make a case for her continuing campaign by pointing out that nomination fights have often gone on into the summer. As one of her illustrations, she mentioned that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June. It wasn’t the best example to use, but it’s absurd to suggest, as some Obama supporters immediately did, that Clinton was making some kind of dark hint about Barack Obama’s future. But then, it was equally absurd to portray Clinton’s assertion that it took LBJ’s political skills to turn Martin Luther King’s vision into legislation as an example of politicizing race. Yet the claim that Clinton was playing the race card, which was promoted by some Obama supporters as well as in a memo by a member of Obama’s staff, achieved wide currency. Why does all this matter? Not for the nomination: Obama will be the Democratic nominee. But he has a problem: Many grass-roots Clinton supporters feel that she has received unfair, even grotesque treatment. And the lingering bitterness from the primary campaign could cost Obama the White House. To the extent that the general election is about the issues, Obama should have no trouble winning over former Clinton supporters, especially the white working-class voters he lost in the primaries. His health care plan is seriously deficient, but he will nonetheless be running on a far more worker-friendly platform than his opponent. Indeed, John McCain has shed whatever maverick tendencies he may once have had, and become almost a caricature conservative -- an advocate of lower taxes for the rich and corporations, a privatizer and shredder of the safety net. But elections always involve emotions as well as issues, and there are some ominous signs in the polling data. In Florida, in particular, the rolling estimate produced by the professionals at Pollster.com shows McCain running substantially ahead of Obama, even as he runs significantly behind Clinton. Ohio also looks problematic, and Pennsylvania looks closer than it should. It’s true that head-to-head polls five months before the general election have a poor track record. But they certainly give reason to worry. The point is that Obama may need those disgruntled Clinton supporters, lest he manage to lose in what ought to be a banner Democratic year. So what should Obama and his supporters do? Most immediately, they should realize that the continuing demonization of Clinton serves nobody except McCain. One more trumped-up scandal won’t persuade the millions of voters who stuck with Clinton despite incessant attacks on her character that she really was evil all along. But it might incline a few more of them to stay home in November. Nor should Obama supporters dismiss Clinton’s strength as a purely Appalachian phenomenon, with the implication that Clinton voters are just a bunch of hicks. So what comes next? Clinton needs to do her part: she needs to be careful not to act as a spoiler during what’s left of the primary, she needs to bow out gracefully if, as seems almost certain, Obama receives the nod, and she needs to campaign strongly for the nominee once the convention is over. She has said she’ll do that, and there’s no reason to believe that she doesn’t mean it. But mainly it’s up to Obama to deliver the unity he has always promised -- starting with his own party. One thing to do would be to make a gesture of respect for Democrats who voted in good faith by recognizing Florida’s primary votes -- which at this point wouldn’t change the outcome of the nomination fight. The only reason I can see for Obama supporters to oppose seating Florida is that it might let Clinton claim that she received a majority of the popular vote. But which is more important -- denying Clinton bragging rights, or possibly forfeiting the general election? What about offering Clinton the vice presidency? If I were Obama, I’d do it. Adding Clinton to the ticket -- or at least making the offer -- might help heal the wounds of an ugly primary fight. Here’s the point: the nightmare Obama and his supporters should fear is that in an election year in which everything favors the Democrats, he will nonetheless manage to lose. He needs to do everything he can to make sure that doesn’t happen.