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. 

 

     

 

SHATTERING THE GLASS CEILING

WILL AMERICA FINALLY PUT A WOMAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE?

The United States has never elected a woman president or

vice president.That fact stands out as the 2020 campaign gets going. If a “Madam President,” or even a “Madam Vice President,” raises her right hand on the U.S. Capitol steps on January 20, 2021, the country will have made significant history. Whether the nation elects a female president or vice president represents a major part of the 2020 campaign story, especially since so many women are running for president this time.

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The two major American political parties have nominated three women for the nation’s two top political jobs. All three lost. But, there is a story with each one that makes saying the country won’t elect a woman unfair and probably not accurate. Each lost for a variety of reasons, some having to do with sex and some having to do with other things.

New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro became the

first woman on a major party ticket in 1984 when Walter Mondale picked her as his running mate. Some thought Mondale, trailing badly in the polls, needed a jumpstart for his campaign against Ronald Reagan and picking a woman vice presidential candidate might give him that. It didn’t. Mondale and Ferraro lost in a 49 state landslide, meaning Mondale probably was doomed in the first place and no running mate would have made a difference.

John McCain selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his 2008 race against Barack Obama. Palin gave McCain a brief boost in the polls, but that faded fast as Palin’s woeful lack of preparation for national office became painfully clear. McCain and his close aides later confessed they regretted the choice.

Palin/Mcain

Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 and polls suggested she’d win, shattering the glass ceiling.

Speculating about why she lost has become  a cottage industry. She, and others, have blamed her loss, at least in part, on sexism. No one should deny sexism played a role in Clinton’s defeat, but blaming it all on sexism isn’t accurate or fair. Too many other things, including FBI Director Jim Comey, the Russians, Clinton’s own baggage, and the strange nature of Donald Trump’s appeal, figured into the 2016 outcome to say Clinton lost because of her gender.

Sex and the 2020 Campaign

As of this writing, six women have announced their candidacies for the 2020 Democratic nomination. One of them, spiritualist author Marianne Williamson, who’s never held public office and lost a congressional race as an independent in 2014, seems the longest of long shots. Another, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, starts out in the bottom tier of a very crowded field and would become a factor only with a huge upset in an early caucus or primary. But four others, all U.S. Senators, can make a credible case for becoming the Democratic nominee:

• Kirstin Gillibrand of Ne w York 
• Kamala Harris of California
• Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
• Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts   

All have strengths and weaknesses the 2020 campaign will expose and exacerbate, leaving sex aside. But will the sheer fact of gender derail an otherwise winning campaign?

The available evidence doesn’t answer the question. Polls

taken between 2012 and  last year show about five per cent of voters, on average, say they absolutely won’t vote for a woman for president. Slightly fewer said they wouldn’t vote for a black person (atheism remains the biggest taboo in American politics, with 43% saying in 2012 they wouldn’t vote for an atheist, though that dropped to 40% by 2015). The meaning of such polls remains unclear since pollsters ask the questions in the abstract. The right person and an appealing set of issue positions might overcome gender, racial, or religious bias.

The history doesn’t answer the question either because of the unique circumstances under which each female vice

presidential or presidential nominee ran. Democrats have proven they will nominate a woman for president; that glass ceiling has been shattered. This time, if a woman gets the presidential nomination or accepts the vice presidency, unlike Ferraro, they won’t face a candidate on the other side anywhere near as popular as Reagan. All the women now holding office, meaning Gabbard, Gillibrand, Harris, Klobuchar, and Warren, seem infinitely better prepared than Palin. At least at the moment, none are as disliked as Clinton. In short, all seemingly have better prospects than their predecessors on this journey.

The Rest of the World 

Many nations to which we compare ourselves have long

since crossed the threshold of selecting a female leader. Angela Merkel, maybe the real leader of the Free World, has been German Chancellor since 2005. Theresa May serves as the United Kingdom’s second woman Prime Minister. Women have led India (Indira Gandhi) and Israel (Golda Meir). 

Only the 2020 primary and general election campaigns will determine whether the United States joins its world counterparts and finally elects a woman to one of its two highest offices. In the post-World War II era, becoming vice president has often been the ticket to the oval office (see, e.g., Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush), so even the election of a woman as vice president would represent a major milestone. In 2020, America can catch up with much of the rest of the western world. It’s about time.