I. How to Pick a Vice President There are several schools of thought.
I.
VP as Meat Shield. This is for the president who worries about being impeached---Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush. Pick a Spiro Agnew or Dan Quayle so that Congress can not impeach you for fear of having an idiot president. With impeachment now a Texas Two Step, you have bought yourself extra protection.
II.
VP as Help Mate. This is the option for the most confident candidates---Bill Clinton, LBJ. Select a running mate whom you really like, who has politics a lot like yours, whom you can send to work doing important jobs during your administration. Bill Clinton made Al Gore one of the most active VPs of all time. LBJ revealed an unexpected liberal streak when he selected Humphrey, whom he put to work on progressive causes.
III.
VP as Back Up President. This is the option for the novice candidate. The one who is strong on charisma but low on national experience. Former governors Carter, Reagan, Bush Jr. and youthful JFK all made good use of well known veteran party stalwarts to shore up the base and to reassure voters that once they were in office someone would have their back. This allowed the American people to take a chance on change.
Which kind of Vice President should Barrack Obama select? His number one vulnerability is the same as that of JFK----his extreme youth and his exotic background. JFK was a Catholic. Obama is of mixed race and spent part of his life in another country. Obama needs a VP with extremely high name recognition----there should be no “getting to know you” involved. If the GOP has a chance to paint his VP as inexperienced or risky, then his choice will do him no good. He needs someone with experience. He needs someone who can mobilize the party base. He needs someone who can clean up in the VP debates. He needs his own LBJ.
II. The Selection of LBJ to Run With JFK In retrospect, the selection of Johnson to be Kennedy’s running mate was a fortunate one. The combo probably helped JFK win his squeaker close victory over Nixon. LBJ continued to fight for such JFK initiatives as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and he created Medicare. However, at the time, people predicted disaster.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n10_v29/ai_19898073/pg_3?tag=artBody;col1 By late morning, word of an impending johnson nomination had reached the convention floor. "All hell broke loose! They were just up in arms," Hubert Humphrey said of his fellow liberals. The normally sanguine Arthur Schlesinger lit into Phil Graham with such ferocity that Grahams wife, Katharine, had to pull them apart. New Mexico Congressman Stewart Udell ran from delegation to delegation "putting out fires," promising his liberal friends that a Kennedy-Johnson ticket was the surest route to victory. It was a difficult pitch. Negro leaders cried "sell-out", the D.C. delegation, infuriated by rumors of Johnson's selection, threatened hollowly to tear the convention apart. As word of the spreading liberal revolt reached JFK's suite, Robert Kennedy in particular saw the choice of Johnson as a grave mistake.
Johnson had his own fires to quench. Few Texans had even considered that LBJ might take the vice presidency. Now, most felt deserted and sick at heart, just as bitter as the Kennedy supporters. "Who'd want to be vice president for that man?" Jake Jacobson demanded. Juanita Roberts, Johnson's secretary, was not the only one to characterize the ticket as upside down. In Johnson's suite, political leaders gathered to voice their support or outrage. Robert Kerr was so livid that upon confirmation of the bad news, he reportedly slapped Bobby Baker in the face. Get me my .38," Kerr yelled at Baker, LBJ, and Lady Bird. "I'm gonna kill every damn one of you. I can't believe that my three best friends would betray me" Eventually, either Rayburn or Baker converted Kerr, who apologized to the Johnsons for "los my head "
Meanwhile, the two Kennedy brothers sat alone inside Jack's suite in utter indecision. "Jack changed his mind back and forth, as I did ... at least six times," Bobby remembered. "The problem was, if it wasn't a good idea, how you'd get out of it. Secondly, if you did get him out of it, how bitter would he be?" Shortly after 1:00 p.m. they decided to talk Johnson off the ticket, to undo "the terrible mistake" Text
But in retrospect, it was not a mistake. It was a winning move. JFK had avoided the Last Temptation.
III. The Last Temptation From the link above:
Had Bobby been converted to a Kennedy-Johnson ticket? It seems highly unlikely, for as Bobby later explained, johnson had 'said some rather nasty things -- or his people had -- and we hadn't really gotten over that'.
Politics is not for the squeamish or those with fragile egos. If you care that your opponent “said some rather nasty things” you will soon find that there is no one you can do business with in DC.
The Last Temptation is to put ego before duty.
I don’t wanna have a VP who said some rather nasty things about me in the primary . Why not? If having a former rival close at hand makes voters more likely to ignore your own relative lack of experience and
elect you president so you can acquire experience in office then what is lost?
Once you are the Party nominee, you have a duty to the Party to create a ticket that is electable. If you do not win because ego got in the way, 100% of the responsibility will rest on your head forever.
IV. The Thomas Eagleton Consideration The Republicans and their right wing news media flunkies have made it clear that they are using the 1972 Pat Buchanan/Nixon/CREEP handbook. Chaos at the Convention, moles online posing as supporters of Obama or Clinton posting inflammatory rubbish about fellow Democrats (the use of “cattle futures”, “Vince Foster” and “Clintonista” at DU should have been the tip off), conservative journalists instructing Republicans to cross over to vote first for Obama and then later for Clinton to keep the Democratic primary contest going as long as possible. These things have been well documented elsewhere, and I have linked the documentation in my journals.
This means that the next step in the plan will be moles planted at the Convention to disrupt the proceedings. Maybe a national terra warning to distract from Obama’s big moment.
And then a replay of the Eagleton Affair, since this sealed the nails in the McGovern campaign’s coffin.
Democratic nominee George S. McGovern's presidential hopes virtually evaporated when it was revealed shortly after the party convention that his newly chosen vice presidential running mate, Missouri U.S. Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton, had been hospitalized on three occasions for depression and had undergone electroshock therapy.
Eagleton had kept the explosive information from McGovern at the convention, but too many Missouri politicians and others knew about his secret for it to be kept under wraps. An anonymous tip about Eagleton's past to the Detroit Free Press began the chain of events that eventually brought the Democrat's episodes to public view.
The least responsible coverage of the ensuing frenzy was provided by columnist Jack Anderson, who falsely reported a half-dozen Eagleton "arrests" for drunk driving and other traffic offenses based on a questionable and unverified tip. Anderson's gross breach of journalistic ethics in printing unproven gossip generated some sympathy for Eagleton, but it could not save him.
Under pressure from McGovern and many senior Democrats, Eagleton withdrew from the ticket, but not before McGovern had swallowed a suicide pill by declaring himself to be "1,000 percent" behind his doomed partner.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/eagleton.htmWho was spreading all these rumors? No one knows for certain, however according to Hunter S. Thompson, the FBI had Eagleton’s hospital records.
This was all back in 1972, before there were 7 ½ years of warrantless government spying on every telecommunications transmission in the United States. The Bush administration knows everything that every possible VP nominee----and their families, friends, campaign workers, staff---have done, said, bought online and sold (as in stocks) during all this time. They also have the goods on lots of people who can be persuaded to make things up about possible VP nominees.
If Obama picks someone who is relatively unknown on the national stage, that person has a great big
Kick Me sign plastered on his or her back. Because Karl Rove has no imagination. Karl Rove’s biggest fault is his predictability. If something works once, he will do it again. There is zero chance that they will not try the Eagleton ploy if there is any way that they can get away with it. And as we all know from the Eagleton affair, asking a candidate, his family, friends and staffers if he has skeletons in his closet assures you of absolutely nothing. You need someone who has had time to acquire political enemies who would have uncovered and used any dirt that was there already.
V. If McGovern/Humphrey had run in 1972….Nixon still would have won. He was the incumbent, and he was breaking laws and doing dirty tricks. But I will bet that McGovern would not have lost 49 out of 50 states.
McGovern, as the winner of his party's nomination, was willing to bury the hatchet. Humphrey refused to run with McGovern. He was too angry. Pat Buchanan’s divide and conquer operation in which dirty tricks were played against one Democrat and attributed to another Democrat proved wildly successful. None of the other Democratic candidates would run with McGovern. Even Teddy Kennedy, who supported McGovern would not help him out. It was the year the party imploded, just the way that Nixon wanted it to.
This year, things are less lop sided. The race between Obama and McCain is much closer, since neither is an incumbent. Maybe that is why Obama is the one who is unwilling to bury the hatchet. He thinks he needs no help winning the election. He does not like the thought of being overshadowed, so he would rather not have the woman who got almost as many votes as he did sharing the ticket with him.
Fear of being upstaged by your VP choice is not a sound reason to reject a running mate. If your VP can draw that kind of support, then she is an asset. A winner never misses an opportunity to improve his odds. Resentment over "nasty words" in the primary is not a sound reason to reject a running mate. If it were, JFK probably would have lost to Nixon and we would not have a Voting Rights Act, a Civil Rights Act and no Medicare either, but we still would have had the Vietnam War.
Clinton settles the experience problem, the same way that LBJ, Mondale, Bush Sr and Cheney settled it for their running mates. She is solid with the base, so that Obama can attempt to connect with independents. She is excellent at debate and on the attack. She is thick skinned and does not mind being the target of the GOP's negative campaigning. She has an established network of supporters and donors to draw upon. She is strong on the economy, the number one issue with voters. She can pull back the blue collar Democrats that McCain is trying to poach and shore up the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida.
She is used to playing second fiddle and letting someone else take all the credit. She also makes an effective meat shield, since there are many Republicans who will hesitate to make a serious attempt to unseat Obama for fear of creating a second Clinton presidency.
Most important of all, the unity ticket eliminates the lingering question of dirty tricks in the Democratic primary, which the Republicans will attempt to exploit to greater advantage in the fall in order to peel away some of those 17.5 million Clinton voters. For those too young to remember 1972, Humphrey had a loyal Democratic following, and they were steamed with George McGovern. His African-American base was not about to vote for Nixon, but they reversed their trend of increasing participation in presidential elections. I.e. that year a bunch of Black people stayed home rather than vote for McGovern. And blue collar whites who traditionally voted for Humphrey----an unusually high number of them crossed over and voted for Nixon. This year we may see women stay home and we may see blue collar whites cross over to vote for McCain, and that could be enough to tip the election if it is a close one.
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