PICKING A VICE PRESIDENT: START WITH WHAT, NOT WHO.

PERHAPS JOE BIDEN’S MOST IMPORTANT DECISION

Former Vice President and presumed

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has named his vice presidential selection steering committee. The group will help Biden with vetting potential running mates. Biden has already said he will choose a woman.

In due course, we’ll weigh in on prospective candidates. Pundits are floating about a dozen names. With the pick not

expected until late next month at the earliest, we’ll have time to comment on the pros and cons of possible choices. For now, we focus on what Biden should look for, not who. 

The unique circumstances in 2020 make this selection that much more important.  If

elected,  Biden would take office at age 78, older than any person ever upon first inauguration. He has hinted he wouldn’t seek a second term, putting his vice president in prime position to succeed him. Since the Second World War, six vice presidents have gone on to become president. In that same period, no major party has denied the presidential nomination to a vice president or former vice president who sought it. 

So, what qualities should Biden seek? We each made lists and factored them together, arriving at a four-part test we now present in no particular order. Each of us may assign more importance to one or another of these traits, but we really want someone with all of them.

Electability: You can’t Save Souls in an Empty Church

All three of us recognize the vice presidential candidate must help Biden

The Nightmare - The Art of Mark Bryan

win the election and end the Donald Trump nightmare. Woodson goes so far as to list the states – Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan – he thinks the vice presidential candidate must help Biden carry. Ideally, the person could help turn out core Democratic voters – blacks, browns, millennials, suburban women – perhaps putting in play states like Texas and Georgia.

The research on how much a vice presidential candidate can help presents

a mixed bag. A few studies say the second banana can make up to a three-percentage point difference. Others say it’s less, if any.

There’s disagreement about whether a vice presidential candidate can help carry a particular state, especially the candidate’s home state. John Kennedy – and most analysts of the 1960 election – believed Lyndon Johnson secured Texas for the Democrats that year. Some think Tim Kaine helped Hillary Clinton carry Virginia in 2016. On the other hand, Lloyd Bentsen couldn’t help Michal Dukakis win Texas in 1988. John Edwards didn’t claim North Carolina for John Kerry in 2004.

The Ready-to-Play Test: Can She Be President?

Henry states this as a matter of “experience in governance.”  For Rob, it’s “gravitas” – can we envision the vice president as commander-in-chief, confronting a foreign crisis (or a national pandemic)?  In the event of Biden’s death or incapacity, could the new or acting president rally the nation to a cause? 

John McCain paid a huge price for picking someone unprepared for national office in Sarah Palin. Though she gave McCain an initial boost in the polls, the more exposure Palin got, the worse the choice looked.   

Some of the women being suggested as possible running mates for Biden don’t offer the kind of resumes vice presidential candidates historically present.  They’ve only served as state legislators, been mayors, or briefly held

congressional seats. Only one or two have foreign policy experience. We know the paper resume doesn’t mean everything, but it has some importance.

Compatibility:  Are They on Same Page?

We had different ways of putting this point, but the more we thought about it, the easier reconciling our views became. All three of us think the president and vice president must  unify on policy, with the vice president strongly advocating the president’s agenda, even if she disagrees internally. Biden has said, based on his experience in flying right seat for Barack Obama for eight years, he wants someone who will dissent within the councils of the White House, but will go out and push for whatever final decision he makes. 

This presents more of a problem than might appear at first glance. Lyndon Johnson was miserable as vice president because of the way the Kennedys cut him out of a meaningful policymaking role. He was never an effective spokesman for the New Frontier. Former president Bill Clinton and James Patterson, in their bestselling novel The President is

Missing,  present a vice president with resentments and a separate agenda that, for a time, appeared to threaten the nation. Biden should pick a team player and treat her as such. 

Restorative Capacity: Putting the Country Back Together

Even if the coronavirus hadn’t ravaged the nation’s health and its economy, any Democrat elected in 2020 would face a monumental job in restoring the country's moral authority. Diminished respect for the

rule of law, broken foreign alliances, mistrust based on ethnicity and hyper partisanship represent just some of the intangibles a new administration will face. The pandemic won’t have gone away by January 2021. A new vice president may have a big role in helping with the remaining economic and public health consequences.

Woodson says he wants a vice presidential candidate who can “relate to a broad coalition of people.” The vice president will need that capacity in helping Biden restore America’s place

and standing in the world. She must help the president bring together a cross-section of America in support of the reclamation project the next administration must undertake.

Our criteria ask a lot of potential vice presidents, but we don’t think we ask too much. Biden, if he wins, will have a big job. The woman on his wing will have a lot to do. 

 

     

 

THE ROBERT MUELLER SHOW: AND WE ARE NOT SAVED

We’ve had two inspirational American presidents during our lifetimes - John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama. In different contexts, they requested sacrifice. Kennedy, as an organizing principle for his New Frontier, suggested Americans ask what they could do for their country when juxtaposed with asking what the country could do for them. Obama, in seeking passage of the Affordable Care Act, implicitly asked that some Democratic House members sacrifice their seats so millions could have health insurance. The bill passed, and Republicans won the House in 2010.

After Robert Mueller’s appearance before two House committees proved the  Special Counsel couldn’t magically make beginning an impeachment inquiry on President Trump easy, we ask what sacrifice Democratic politicians will make in the cause of saving our democracy. Mueller didn’t “move the needle” in favor of impeachment, leaving in place the political reasons for not proceeding. We think, however, impeachment should remain an option and if some Democratic office-holders lose their seats in that process, so be it.  America has been attacked. We’re already at war. War comes with casualties.

Mueller’s Testimony

We need say little about Mueller’s July 24 testimony. For most of the day, he looked older than his 74 years, fumbling for references in his report and having trouble hearing the questions. He perked up in the afternoon session before the Intelligence Committee, freed from the constraints of obstruction of justice law and anxiously venting his concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 election and the likelihood of a repeat.

Mueller’s halting delivery and snooze-button demeanor made for less than compelling television, especially as it unfolded. Edited clips looked better, but pundits still gave the exercise a failing grade and even left-leaning commentators pronounced impeachment dead, especially if Mueller’s appearance was to have turbocharged the process.  

Having said all that, the substance of what Mueller told the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees was compelling. Under focused, disciplined questioning by well-prepared Democrats who swore off grandstanding for efficiency and clarity, Mueller laid out what’s in his 400 plus page report that so few Americans have read. Trump’s bad acts became disgustingly obvious for anyone paying attention. Had any other President committed even one of the sins the testimony covered, that President would have been drummed out of office long ago.    

Impeachment and 2020

As the talking heads analyzed impeachment prospects in light of Mueller’s day, one piece of reporting caught our eye. A congressional staffer allegedly said impeachment won’t happen because the 218 votes required in the House aren’t there and won’t be there. Thirty-one House Democrats who represent Trump-leaning districts can’t support it. Voting for impeachment supposedly would sound an electoral death knell for these Representatives.

For this reason, Mueller’s appearance barely moved House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She’s insisted she’d rather see Trump in prison than impeached, believing the best way for ridding the nation of him lies at the 2020 ballot box, then perhaps prosecuting him for his crimes after he leaves office.

We get the politics and we desperately want Trump gone too. But we wonder if Speaker Pelosi has considered:

·      Trump has already invited foreign intervention in the next election, signaling he’d turn our democratic traditions over to foreign dictators.

·      Mueller and American intelligence agencies recognize how serious a problem we have. Mueller wondered if foreign election interference has become “the new normal.” Without impeachment, does that happen?

·      With war already underway, perhaps we don’t have the luxury of worrying about political survival of backbench House members.

·      Can our relatively young democracy stand eight years of Trump and is the risk of that worth taking?

Mutually Exclusive?

We also question another aspect of Pelosi’s political calculation. Her strategy gives America one shot at getting rid of Trump – the 2020 election. Suppose that shot misses? Wouldn’t two chances be better?

An impeachment inquiry and beating Trump in the election aren’t mutually exclusive. The approaches could, in fact, work hand-in-hand in ridding us of him. It’s true the Senate probably won’t remove Trump, but the facts brought out in an impeachment inquiry could significantly aid the 2020 campaign effort.

Information developed in a full-fledged impeachment inquiry might serve as a powerful weapon for the 2020 Democratic ticket. Impeachment could animate and mobilize the Democratic base. Pundits speak often of Trump’s base, but a Democratic base exists and most of it wants Trump impeached. A vigorous impeachment inquiry that explains the already exposed Trump crimes could fire up and turn out the Democratic base, especially in the key Midwestern states Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. Turnout in the 2018 mid-terms, especially in the suburbs where women made the difference for Democrats, suggests the potential of an energized electorate.

So, we return to sacrifice. If the price of ditching Trump

includes an unpopular impeachment vote and loss of a few congressional seats, perhaps that’s a price worth paying. Most people go into politics claiming they do so not for themselves, but for serving the greater good. Maybe we test that claim. We ask America’s finest young women and men for the ultimate sacrifice in war. Perhaps, in this war, we ask office-holders for the ultimate political sacrifice.