The buzz today is over who will be Barack Obama’s No. 2 on the Democratic ticket. And for those hopeful of an Obama-Clinton team, well, sounds like the chances are fading, according to the New York Times:
When Mr. Obama appeared Sunday on “Meet the Press” on NBC he offered a description of the kind of person he was looking for, hinting that it would not be someone who was identified strongly with Washington, a choice that would appear to leave out Mrs. Clinton. His associates said this description reflected the lack of serious thought being given to Mrs. Clinton for the post.
The feeling goes both ways. Mrs. Clinton has told associates in recent days that she thinks there is little chance Mr. Obama will pick her and that she views the public pronouncements by some of Mr. Obama’s aides that she is under review as nothing more than a courtesy.
She has not been asked to provide written documentation to the committee vetting the background of candidates for Mr. Obama. Although Mrs. Clinton probably needs less flyspecking than almost anyone else in the field — considering how long she has been in public life and how intensively her past has been examined — the silence from that corner is being taken by Mrs. Clinton’s advisers as evidence of where she stands on Mr. Obama’s vice presidential list.
Clinton wants it. She made that painfully obvious by not bowing out in the graceful way Obamacrats wanted her to earlier this summer, making very public her wishes to be the V.P. nominee. She’s an incredibly charismatic political figure, and this would still be the Dream Team of Democrats, but the risks are incredibly deep, too. Clinton has an honesty problem (Bosnia), and the infighting her campaign team suffered from during the primary be it Mr. Clinton or Mark Penn appears to have Obamacrats worried of potential conflict in the future, the NY Times reported. I still believe Obama would be wise to pick someone Hillary Clinton signs off on, someone she’s enthusiastic about, someone who rallies the Hillraisers and the Hillarycrats the way the junior senator from New York can. Evan Bayh anyone?
But Obama may not be looking at Sen. Bayh of Indiana. Today, speculationcentered squarely on Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a state that’s purple and trending blue. Kaine’s young, an outsider, a history of winning be it the Richmond mayor’s race or the gubernatorial contest, and a noted capability of working with the GOP-controlled Legislature. But as Newsweek’s Andrew Romano points out in his Stumper blog, Kaine may expose the Obama campaign’s weakest front:
The dealbreaker, however, could be experience. Even though polls have repeatedly shown that voters question Obama’s readiness for the role of
Commander in Chief, the candidate himself is reportedly uninterested in choosing a running mate for the sole purpose of bolstering his national-security cred. I can understand his reluctance–such a selection would probably call attention to the thinness of his resume while doing little to quiet critics’ concerns. But the difference between Kaine and say, (Kansas Gov. Kathleen) Sebelius, is that Kaine’s not only a foreign-policy rookie–he’s rookie, period. In fact, he’s the only candidate on Obama’s list–long or short–who’s served less time in statewide office (two-and-a-half years) than Obama himself. Reasonable people can argue over how and whether this greenness would affect his vice presidency. But there’s little doubt that Kaine’s thin resume would do more to help Republicans crystallize their most convincing attack on Obama–that’s simply not ready to lead–than any other contender. Simply put, he expands the target rather than shrinking it.
Both Clinton and Kaine possibilities speak to the incredibly complicated process of choosing a running mate, and with enthusiasm over Obama’s candidacy failing to give him a commanding lead over Republican John McCain in national polls, his choice becomes that much more vital and that much more difficult.
