Now that the question is coming front and center, Barack Obama may want to turn to his backer Ted Sorensen for advice about putting Hillary Clinton on the ticket with him, as John F. Kennedy did with his chief rival for the nomination, Lyndon Johnson.
Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, reports today that she “is probably going to fight to be the vice presidential nominee on an Obama-for-president ticket.”
After a bitter campaign, it won’t be easy. Obama supporters, notably his wife Michelle, are reportedly opposed, but as Sorensen notes in his new memoirs, so was JFK’s brother Robert. Yet Kennedy offered Johnson a place on the ticket, mostly to help win Texas and other Southern states in what would turn out to be a close election. Read the rest of this entry »
First, if you’re wondering what I as a Hillary supporter think about Hillary’s decision to continue running after yesterday, the answer is I don’t know what I think of it as a strategy. Naturally I would like to believe that she could still somehow prevail. I am not sanguine. People are speculating that she is now running for the VP slot. We’ll see.
But — and this matters more to me — I most definitely admire her for her unswerving commitment to see the process through. Despite the pissing and moaning in the media, and whatever the outcome, I predict that the day will certainly arrive when people will look back with awe and amazement at Hillary’s insistence in going the distance against all odds and wish that they had chosen her. She is indomitable. I like that in a Democrat and so should other Democrats. Alas, many of them are so beguiled by the media myths about Hillary that they just can’t see what a force of nature she really is.
Obama could learn a lot from her and he’d be a better (future) president for it. Instead, I imagine we’ll be stuck with him in his current incarnation — all rhetoric, all the time.
This week the President of Iran was strutting around his nation’s main uranium enrichment facility, claiming installation of 6,000 new centrifuges in addition to the existing 3,000 there–an ill-advised nose-thumbing gesture in the direction of the US and Israel.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a chronic sufferer from the need for attention on the world stage, who has been in remission since his visit to the UN last fall. With this latest turn for the TV cameras, he is showing symptoms of an acute and, for his regime, possibly life-threatening new outbreak.
Dick Cheney immediately made the diagnosis on right-wing talk radio. The Iranian President, he told Sean Hannity, is “a very dangerous man” who “has repeatedly stated that he wants to destroy Israel” and believes that “the highest honor that can befall a man is that he should die a martyr in facilitating the return of the 12th Imam. It’s a radical, radical point of view.”
After the torrent of words over the arrogance of America’s self-selected, unelected Vice President, a former Republican colleague and friend boils it all down to one word in today’s Washington Post.
Ex-Congressman Mickey Edwards explains what changed his mind about defending Cheney, his “all-too-revealing conversation this week with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz. On Wednesday, reminded of the public’s disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: ‘So?’”
Into that one word is compressed more than seven years of secrecy, usurping of power and stealing traditional American freedoms.
Almost a year ago, the Crystal Ball took a first crack at listing the vice presidential possibilities in both parties (LINK). The list has held up surprisingly well. But the justifications for various candidacies have changed, and now that we know John McCain will make the choice, it’s time for reconsideration. (We’ll await the unofficial crowning of the Democratic nominee to play this game on the Democratic side, unless Democrats keep the game tied through the spring. Our discipline can only last so long.)
Let’s start by revising and extending our earlier remarks, and asking the most important question. Ideally, what does a presidential candidate need in a VP ticket-mate? Here are the most important elements, and a second-banana nominee ought to meet most of these criteria:
Chris Cillizza’s ‘The Fix’ Blog at the Washington Post has moved on to considering the most-likely vice-presidential candidates with: The Line on Running Mates
As Super Tuesday draws ever closer, the fields for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations have narrowed significantly. [snip] With such a narrow field, it seems pointless to continue the presidential Line. [snip] Although neither party has settled on a nominee just yet, the speculation about who will be No. 2 on the ticket has already begun in earnest.
If John McCain is the Republican presidential nominee, ‘The Fix’ proposes former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (MN), Gov. Mark Sanford (SC) or Sen. John Thune (SD) as his running mate.
If Mitt Romney is the Republican presidential nominee, ‘The Fix’ proposes Gov. Don Carcieri (RI), Gov. Mark Sanford (SC) or former Sen. Jim Talent (MO) as his running mate.
If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic presidential nominee, ‘The Fix’ proposes former Gov. and current Sen. Evan Bayh (IN), former Sen. John Edwards, Gov. Bill Richardson (NM), Gov. Ted Strickland (OH) or former Gov. Tom Vilsack (IA) as her running mate.
If Barack Obama is the Democratic presidential nominee, ‘The Fix’ proposes former Sen. Tom Daschle (SD), former Sen. John Edwards, Gov. Tim Kaine (VA), Sen. Claire McCaskill (MO) or Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (KS) as his running mate.
