WP: The Running-Mate Roundup

[godai]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020802980_2.html?nav=hcmodule&sub=AR


Hillary Clinton has a challenge, too. Who in his or her right mind would want to serve as Clinton's vice president, knowing that her husband, Bill, would be roaming around the White House, dropping in on Cabinet meetings, greeting foreign guests and chatting up the staff?

True, the job itself has no formal responsibilities beyond ensuring succession and acting as Senate president. (Vice President John Adams said the vice presidency is "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.") But Al Gore, Walter Mondale and Dick Cheney, as Coen notes in his book, redefined the office and elevated its stature.

Could that happen in a Clinton White House? Can a mule whistle?

Fear is, Billary would regard the vice president the same way that Harry Truman said history recognized that office: "about as useful as a cow's fifth teat."

So who would sign on, if asked?

To make up for derailing Obama, Billary would probably turn to a black centrist substitute such as Harold Ford, chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council and a former Tennessee congressman. He'd probably take it.

And if Obama's the nominee?

He's got some shoring up to do, especially in national security and foreign policy. Just as Lyndon Johnson's Southern strength and Washington savvy helped overcome some of John F. Kennedy's disadvantages, Obama would do well to select a running mate with a little seasoning -- and a little gray hair wouldn't hurt, either.

He's got a large and stellar field to draw from among senior senators, governors and House members. And unlike Clinton, Obama is free to select a vice president who can truly partner with the president on key issues without worrying about second-guessing from an omnipresent spouse who has been there, done that and thinks he knows it all.

[Perky]

1. The pronblem with thisis that a VP is second in line not second in charge

It is the the difference between Leo McGarry and John Hoynes

Bill would want to be Chief of Staff and run the country... where as the VP is there pretty much just in case.

The VP would not be considered a rival to Bill the Chief of Staff is the real power and that person better wacth their backs

[msongs]

2. nice hit piece on hillary clinton...

she can only pick a right winger like Harold the republican-lite Ford yet Obama can draw on "a large and stellar field." Plus the insult that a woman is useless without a man running the show behind the scenes.

ok, fine

Msongs