Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Jenny Lewis, 37.

Some sad news, and the good stuff:

1. Richard Ben Cramer, RIP. If you haven't read What It Takes...it's just wonderful, and marvelous accomplishment. Here's a C-SPAN spot; here's a Ben Smith profile from two years ago.

2. John Sides knocks down 2012 presidential campaign effects.


3. Nice one from Timothy Noah about influential Veeps.

4. A useful overview of health care the the federal budget, from Amy Fried.

5. And from Seth Masket, who just possibly might have too much time on his hands: Jews for Cheeses.

Paul Ryan

Either it's a great bluff, or Paul Ryan will be announced as Mitt Romney's running mate in the morning. I blogged on it over at Post Partisan...pretty much what you would expect I would say, if you've been reading me on Veepstakes for the last several months.

I'm sure I'll be writing more soon, here or elsewhere, but not certain that I'll have anything tomorrow beyond "what mattered?", so consider this a comment thread for whatever y'all have on Ryan. I'll toss in a couple of links: here's Ezra Klein and here's Ryan Lizza, who both have exactly the kind of take on it that I'm dissenting from (although I agree with Lizza's take on Ryan himself and very much like his recent excellent profile of Ryan, and I certainly agree with Klein's view of the Ryan budget, especially the emphasis on the long-term budget).

Veepstakes: Governing Side

There are at least three ways to think about Veepstakes.

One is in terms of immediate electoral effect. I've written quite a bit about that...the short version is to avoid disaster by picking someone as vetted as possible, and then look for the upside of a couple points or so in the running mate's home state.

The second is in terms of defining the party. In part this is because the Veepstakes winner is apt to become more important within the party, perhaps even president. Or we can look at it the other way around: Veepstakes isn't just a free choice of the nominee, but one that is affected by preferences of party actors. That's what we're seeing happening this week: party actors are mobilized by the selection, and make clear to the nominee their preferences and especially their veto points. And, in turn, nominees -- who are in an excellent position to understand the strength within the party of various people and groups, having just navigated all of that to get nominated in the first place -- have to judge what is a serious problem for party actors who really matter, as opposed to mere posturing or, perhaps, strong feelings of those who can be ignored.

Then there's a third way. We can think about who is best equipped to do the actual job of a vice president.

The problem with that one is that presidents are not only free to match the VP's tasks to their particular talents and skills, but they also are perfectly free to enlarge or shrink the VP's responsibilities. And from the point of view of the president it's not entirely clear that the president is better off with a Gore or Mondale rather than a Quayle. Let alone a Cheney. There's a problem with the vice president, which is that they more or less can't be fired.

Anyway, if you do want someone to help with governing, I'd argue it's better to go with someone good on process than someone with substantive expertise. And the two Veepstakes rumored candidates who seem to have the right experience for that are Rob Portman and Bobby Jindal. Portman has served in both chambers of Congress and in two presidential branch agencies as US Trade Rep and OMB director; the latter is certainly a good perch for knowing a lot about executive branch politics. Jindal also was in the House, and his experience in state government seems useful; he was also at HHS, so he knows a bit about executive branch agencies, too. Since Mitt Romney is a former governor, that would seem to suggest that Portman's experience is a better fit. In particular, note that each the last three presidents have had a Chief of Staff who had previously been OMB director (Lew, Bolten, Panetta). On the other hand, Portman was only at OMB for thirteen months, and I should note that I'm only talking here about what positions they've held; I have no particular knowledge about how well they did there.

I have no idea what Romney will do, but it sure seems to me that of the people who are getting lots of mentions, Portman is a very logical choice.

Comment of the Day

Have to highlight this comment to my "balanced ticket" post earlier today. Geoff G. starts with a cheesy one playing on Robot Mitt that I had actually thought of using but abandoned, but then gets truly inspired:

Balance is very important, and Mitt knows it. Evidence? Every single name on the shortlist is a human being. The perfect complement.

But I'm hoping that Mitt goes outside the box by hiring a Ronald Reagan impersonator and claiming that it's Ronald Reagan. "But Reagan is dead!" says the liberal media. "Don't you wish, Com-symps! The liberal media claimed he was dead so they could put socialist GHW Bush in the White House and his son could betray conservatism by governing as a conservative. He's as alive as you and me." (A song comes to mind)

The fact-check sites investigate, but can't find conclusive proof that Reagan is dead. Yes, Romney has referred to "the late Ronald Reagan," but you can't believe anything he says. California refuses to release the long-form death certificate, and Peggy Noonan refuses to have the body exhumed. The fact that the alleged impersonator has on at least two occasions said in front of credible witnesses, "I'm getting sick of this; just give me my check and I'm out of here," is suggestive, but reports from the '80's confirm that Ronald Reagan said the same thing at the end of nearly every cabinet meeting.

We rate the claim that Ronald Reagan is dead as half-true, and the claim that he is alive as half-false.

A bit sprawling in places, but the core idea is a win.

I don't really have any additional value added to this one, but I'll tag on that I totally agree with Seth Masket's advice to Mitt Romney today: be conventional and boring!

Balance That Ticket!

My PP post today is about Veepstakes. I make the case that the one thing that nominees should not worry about when picking a running mate is the message that it sends; after a day or two, that message disappears and you're left with the person, whoever he or she is, but mostly the attention is back on the presidential nominee, and that person is perfectly capable of pushing any message he or she wants. Regardless of the VP.

I think this also speaks against balancing the ticket as an electoral strategy. In the old days, when vice presidential selection might have been part of a deal involving both halves of the ticket, balancing was a nomination strategy, not a general election strategy (although it could have been the latter, too). But nowadays, of course, there's no need to lock up the nomination through Veepstakes, although certainly keeping the party happy is part of what nominees must consider.

At any rate: what would Mitt Romney need to do to balance the ticket, anyway? Not location; Romney goes the president one better, with at least three home states (Michigan, Massachusetts, and while it's a stretch, Utah) to the president's two (Hawaii, Illinois, insert Kenya joke here). Religion, probably; a ticket-balancing Romney would presumably go with a Protestant. Ideology? Yeah, the only moderate taken in the last forty years was George H.W. Bush thirty years ago; that's not really going to change, although given the state of the current GOP most people who are not disqualified because of a long sheet of totally wacko statements run the risk of being considered moderates.

Beyond that, Mitt Romney is an unusual combination of being old and inexperienced (with only four years in government, Romney is even more inexperienced than Barack Obama was in 2008, despite being far older). That's not an easy one to balance! 

In particular, with his only experience at the state level Romney has the typical governor's lack of foreign policy and national security experience. His business background basically is more of the same: the economy, not foreign policy. Usually, governors go for someone who can balance that: Ronald Reagan picked UN Ambassador George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton picked a senator who boasted expertise on military matters, George W. Bush picked a former Secretary of Defense. The only rumored candidate who really fits that is Rob Portman, who spent a year as US Trade Representative and has a a year and a half as a senator, although that's not exactly impressive. 

Again: I don't think balancing as a general election strategy makes much sense, anyway. But if he's trying to do that, he should basically be looking for a post-boomer Protestant with lots of experience, particularly in foreign affairs and national security. Good luck finding that.

Q Day 2: Veepstakes!

Three questions about Veepstakes. TN asks:

All the discussion over VP candidates focuses entirely on their effect on the election, but I wonder: What do you think is the ideal type of person to do the actual job of VP? 

Kal asks:

Do you think the emphasis in the media on the VP's home state is overblown? The last candidate to be picked in large part because of his home state was LBJ 52 years ago. 

Greg asks:

I've noticed that governors are almost never chosen as VPs, and the ones that have been--Agnew and Palin--are two of the worst choices of all time. Another example would be Rockefeller, who was chosen as Ford's VP but not nominated as his running mate in 76. Is this just a coincidence? Is there a reason why governors would make for bad VPs? 

There was a piece in the Times Sunday about how the job of the vice president has really expanded from Walter Mondale on. They tend to be fairly important players within the administration, although what they do varies a lot. I'd say what you would want as far as doing the job well would be pretty much what you look for in a president -- good politician skills on both the campaigning and governing sides -- but with one additional requirement: lots of extra helpings of loyalty. That's because VPs are so hard to get rid of...really nearly impossible in normal circumstances, compared to a normal cabinet secretary or White House staffer who can be fired with hardly any difficulty in most cases. By the way -- note that this is yet another reason that the Sage of Wasilla was a particularly poor choice.

As far as home states: I think the record does show that candidates haven't tended to go with choices intended to sway home states, but I think that mainly shows that presidential candidates have made poor choices. I guess what I think is that the press should report the research, which is that running mates are unlikely to have any significant positive effect beyond a point or two of help in their home states. Beyond that, they should report whatever they're hearing from the nominee's camp, I suppose.

Governors. There's bit a tradition that governors as nominees will choose a Senator, presumably in order to address their traditional weakness in foreign affairs (and, no, that doesn't really make any sense, but it's been the tradition anyway). So since we've had a lot of governors as nominees, that accounts for a lot of it. So we have, what, two governors chosen, one by a (former) VP and one by a Senator, while Gore, GHW Bush, Kerry, Dole, and Mondale (and whoever else I'm missing...trying to do this quickly) didn't go for governors. So it's not that uncommon when the nominee is a governor, but not very common either.

I do think that the problem with Agnew and Palin wasn't really about being governors; I did something on this a while back and if I recall correctly they were the two least experienced Veepstakes winners ever.

Bounce

I usually like Harry Enten's work, but I don't get this argument:

Mitt Romney currently trails in the polling average by about 2 percentage points. If Romney got even half of what Kerry received or about the median vice-presidential declaration effect, then he would move into the lead in the polls. It would mark the first time all year that Romney will have lead in a majority of polls. Romney would almost certainly garner good press and perhaps some extra fundraising. It would also stop the Romneys' financials news cycle. 

Well, yes, Romney would likely get a bounce. After which...the bounce would go away; that's the nature of bounces. Yes, he would get good press for a few days, but then Barack Obama's campaign would start pressing him again on taxes and Bain and all, and if he continued to handle it poorly, he'd be right back where he started. If he's able to handle it well, then he should just do that now.

Sure, as Enten says, the VP bounce is also likely to produce new fundraising success. But again: so what? That bounce will happen whenever it happens, and produce whatever fundraising it will produce. There's no reason to think that the Romney campaign has a cash flow problem, so shifting a little fundraising from August to July isn't likely to matter at all.

My own sense of this is that the later, the better. Why? Because the longer Romney waits, the more relevant information will be produced. That's true even if Romney has already reached a (tentative) decision; better to leak it out in order to learn from the reaction. If they really care for whatever reason about keeping the pick a surprise (and why?), they can always leak out two or three other names between now and the final unveiling.

I still can't really see any significant advantage in doing it now.

Catch of the Day

How about one to Dan Larison for pointing out that, political impossibility aside, Condi Rice...well, I'll let him tell it:

Let’s briefly review Noonan’s argument for Rice to appreciate just how wrong it is. Rice is a figure of “obvious and nameable accomplishment”? Which accomplishment would that be? Completely failing to do a competent job as National Security Adviser? Presiding over the worst period of U.S.-Russian relations since the Cold War? Facilitating Hamas’ takeover of Gaza? Advising Bush as he embarked on one of the greatest debacles of post-WWII U.S. foreign policy? Helping to shape one of the most disastrous foreign policy records of modern times? Take your pick. No one can take any of that away from her. Her accomplishment is obvious. Noonan says that Rice wouldn’t be “learning on the job.” Certainly not. She didn’t seem to learn anything while she was in her previous administration positions, so why start now? Choosing her as the VP nominee would have a “certain boldness.” Then again, driving off of a cliff demonstrates a “certain boldness.”

I have a post up at PP pointing out the totally obvious point that Rice is disqualified anyway because of her position on abortion -- see too Ed Kilgore, who beat me to it. I'm not really sure why some pundits don't get that there's an absolute veto over unorthodox positions on abortion in both parties when it comes to the national ticket, but that veto is surely there.

I'll also add, as I did at PP that I disagree with those who think that Rice would be a poor choice politically because, as Conor Friedersdorf says, "The Republican campaign strategy of mentioning George W. Bush as little as possible would be jeopardized by choosing a figure best known for the controversial role she played helping to shape his foreign policy." If Rice (or any other Bush figure) is chosen, Republicans simply won't mention it -- and Democrats are free to mention Bush whoever is on the ticket.

No, the real political problems for Rice are electoral inexperience and, far more critically, abortion. So she won't be chosen. But Larison is right: whatever the electoral pluses or minuses, the substantive case for Rice is shockingly weak.

Nice catch!

Elsewhere (Or: First of the Last Calls): Veepstakes, McConnell, Bashing Romney

I had a new column up at Salon over the weekend about why Republicans were Romney-bashing last week. Short answer: it's win-win for them.

Today at PP, I talked Veepstakes, and why Romney should be patient about making (or at least announcing) his choice.

And at Greg's place, I got back to the topic of the Sunday Question for Conservatives this week: that the current crop of Republicans really doesn't believe, or at least claims not to believe, in policies to deal with tough economic times. Of course, they could be right! But I'm pretty sure that, right or wrong, it's a very unpopular position.

Veepstakes and Chemistry

What with today sort of being Opening Day and all, I indulged myself over at Post Partisan and wrote about the "Mark Portugal mistake" with regard to Veepstakes. That is, don't overvalue the stuff you've seen in person -- in this case, don't pick your running mate based on who you seemed to get along with on the campaign trail.

Meanwhile, the latest National Journal insiders poll says that Marco Rubio's star is shrinking, while Rob Portman is moving up. Of course, that's all total speculation; the only vote that counts is the one that Mitt Romney will cast, and there's no real way of guessing that. Portman seems like a reasonable choice to me. Granted, he hasn't been vetted through a national campaign, but really only the Huck fits that, and it's not altogether clear he's available, plus there's always the chance that Romney won't want him for some other reason.

As for Portman, he seems relatively safe. He's had a reasonable amount of experience. If you're going to pick a state to get a couple of points of a boost, Ohio is right at the top of the list. I've seen some liberals say that his George W. Bush era stint at OMB will be a problem, what with that administration's fiscal issues, but I find that a pretty obscure line of attack. Now, I'm sure he cast some ugly votes in his fairly long service in the House, but again -- that's not going to matter much for a VP pick.

So Huck still seems like the best choice to me, but Portman isn't bad at all.

Veepstakes and Experience (A Cautionary Tale)

Josh Kraushaar was getting into it on twitter just now, saying that "Rest assured there will be a lot of veepstakes talk, in large part because the GOP's VP bench is so deep." To which I replied that he has the causation wrong; because there will be lots of Veepstakes talk over the next few months, which is caused simply by the vacuum between nomination news and the general election campaign, the Veepstakes talkers will need plenty of people to talk about. And thus a deep bench.

After all, there are always far more plausible VPs than there are plausible presidents (and almost have to be, since all plausible presidents are plausible VPs.

Anyway, Kraushaar also noted, "Striking how many of the VP candidates are part of the class of 2010, back when the GOP got its groove back." He may be right that Romney will seriously consider one or more of the class of 2010, and he's certainly right that Veepstakes observers, myself included, will mention one or more of that group, so I have no dispute with that one.

If Romney were asking me, however, I'd certainly be advising extra caution. Extreme extra caution. In the postwar era, only a handful of VP selections had even close to as little experience as most members of the GOP class of 2010 have.

If we combine time in the Senate, House, cabinet position, or as Governor, the least experienced in the postwar era were (not counting Earl Warren, who would be tied for 4th by being in his sixth year but breaks the tie by being re-elected to statewide office...or, you know, include him if you would like):

4T. John Edwards, 2004, one almost-full Senate term at that point. Worked out fine that year. Exploded in scandal four years later.

4T. Gerry Ferraro, 1984, in her sixth year in the House. Scandal-marred VP run.

4T. Richard Nixon, 1952, after two full House terms and in his second year in the Senate. Scandal-marred VP run, very close to getting dumped from the ticket.

3. Tom Eagleton, 1972, in his fourth year in the Senate (previously had held statewide office including Lt. Gov.). Scandal, bounced off the ticket. Wound up, by the way, having a long, well-respected career in the Senate.

Which leaves the two with the least experience:

2. Sarah Palin, 2008, in her second year as Governor. Well, that didn't work out all that well.

And the champion?

1. Spiro T. Agnew, 1968, in his second year as Governor -- but took office about six weeks after Palin did, so even less experienced on this scale. Did not end up in jail.

That's the list. Hey, Mitt Romney: don't say you weren't warned.

Veepstakes? C'mon, Reporters

A few months ago, I ran an item reminding everyone that it's a complete waste of time to ask potential candidates whether they would serve as a running mate. The story is that there are lots of good reasons for people to say that they would not run for VP even if they would do so if asked...in fact, most people would accept the #2 slot if asked, in most circumstances, but lots of people would deny that before the fact. So there's really no reason to ask.

So, the follow-up: it's also a complete waste of time to ask a presidential candidate who he or she would choose as a running mater. And if any reporter does so, there's no reason to pay attention to the response. Example: Taegan Goddard reminds us today that Mitt Romney "seemed to rule out" Rick Santorum earlier, making Santorum's newly expressed interest in the job a moot point. Except all of it doesn't count: if Santorum says he's interested or not, and if Romney says he'd consider him or not. All of it should be regarded as posturing that has nothing to do with the actual VP selection. Not that there's anything wrong with it; there are some lies that I think are unethical when politicians tell them, but others -- including these sorts of career plan decisions -- are fine with me. And, as far as I can tell, fine with voters, too.

Pro Tips for Vetting Veeps

The NYT's Richard Stevenson reports that Republicans are considering actually vetting their VP candidate this time around. It's sort of amazing how many duds they've had (I don't know how you score Dick Cheney, but they surely picked duds in 1952, 1968, 1988, and 2008).

At any rate, in case they're a little rusty from not having done this since 1996, I'm going to give them a quick hint: google your prospective candidate's name with the word "ethics." If what you get back seems to include the words "...charges" or "...violations" or "formal investigations," you probably want to move on to the next pick. Sure, it's possible that it's all just a massive liberal media conspiracy against her, but perhaps, just perhaps, that's not the fight you want to be having on the campaign trail.

This concludes a short lesson in Pro Tips for Vetting Veeps.

(Yeah, yeah, my real advice is as always just to pick someone that's survived a national campaign with reputation intact -- which in this case mostly narrows it down to The Huck. But it's more fun to do a Palin post).

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Greg Norton, 53. I suppose for those who don't want to click -- the guy who plays bass, not the first baseman.


1. Steve Kornacki has a fun review of the recent history of fantasy VP picks by candidates who were never going to be nominated.

2. Gasoline prices and elections: Brad Plumer looks at the evidence, and John Sides does a bit of new research. Bottom line: high gas prices are a minor drag on a president's re-election.

3. Newt Gingrich is a snake oil salesman. This seems to upset Steven Taylor.

4. I hadn't heard of this one before -- Pundit Tracker, now sort of in a pre-rollout phase. I have no idea whether it will wind up useful or not, but this post is promising.

5. And Alyssa Rosenberg on Whedon's latest, and on Whedon.

Sunday Question for Conservatives

Assuming that Mitt Romney is the nominee...who do you want for VP?

Picking VPs

There's a hit piece up on Reuters today attacking logical GOP vice presidential choice Marco Rubio, hitting him on everything from his personal finances to his (supposed) lack of appeal to non-Cuban Hispanics. Among other things, it has him voting against Sonia Sotomayor, which is flat-out wrong (she was confirmed in 2009 and he didn't arrive in the Senate until 2011), so I have no idea how accurate the rest of the stuff that's being thrown at him might be.

Will Rubio be the VP choice? I don't think anyone can predict it; these choices are highly idiosyncratic. As far as I know, all we can say is that sometimes the nomination runner-up gets the pick (Lyndon Johnson, George H.W. Bush, John Edwards), and sometimes it's someone else. But Rubio would seem to be logical in some senses, what with being from a large swing state and presumably appealing to a large, important demographic group, whatever Reuters wants to tell us.

Logical, except as the article reminds us, for one thing: he hasn't been vetted by a presidential nomination campaign. As I've said, that's really the thing that's separated the awful selections (Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Tom Eagleton, Gerry Ferraro, Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin) from everyone else. In which "awful selection" means that they either were significant campaign problems or, if elected, resigned to avoid jail time. There's simply no better vetting process than a presidential campaign. Of those who went through one, only John Edwards really turned out to be a serious problem, and that was years later; he was fine during 2004. VP candidates Jack Kemp, George H.W. Bush, Joe Biden, and Al Gore all were just fine (as were Lloyd Bentsen and Walter Mondale, each of whom had previously sort-of run, although I wouldn't count those races for this exercise.

The problem, for the Republicans, assuming Mitt Romney is the nominee, is that they're not doing a great job of producing a pool of presidential candidates who have been vetted by a campaign while also holding orthodox views on policy positions the party cares about and having conventional credentials. This round, we have Rick Perry, who was vetted but found wanting; he seems an unlikely pick. Tim Pawlenty diminished himself with his run, and at any rate really didn't stay in long enough to have received the press attention that vetting requires, although it's probably better than nothing. Maybe Rick Santorum? He doesn't really have conventional credentials, since those usually don't include an electoral drubbing, but maybe.

OK, last time around. Fred Thompson is old and hasn't been in office for almost a decade; nope. Rudy Giuliani? Obviously not. Not the fringe candidates, or the ones who dropped out very early (Sam Brownback ran? Oh yeah). There is one, though: Mike Huckabee.

If you go back to 2000, you could add Lamar Alexander, except that he's even older than Fred Thompson, and you could also perhaps add John Kasich.

If Romney asked me for advice, I'd probably say that the do-no-harm list is Pawlenty and Huckabee, and I'd be very much leaning towards the Huck. But the other part of this is that if for whatever reason Romney or important GOP groups find both of them unacceptable, then Romney will wind up with someone who hasn't been through the process. And while that certainly can work, it's a risky move with very little upside.

Veepstakes Musings (Yes, I Know I Shouldn't)

There was some conversation over twitter during the debate last night about the strange fact that no one seems to want to attack Mitt Romney, and someone said it's because they all want to be vice president. Could be! You never know what nutty thing a politician might be thinking.

But really: the VP nominee almost certainly wasn't up on the stage in Iowa. Candidates who are outside the GOP mainstream (Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, to some extent Michele Bachmann) are not going to be selected. Newt Gingrich? C'mon. He'd be just as easy a target as a VP candidate as he is now in Iowa. Not gonna happen. Rick Santorum, despite his Google problem, would seem to be a plausible VP nominee -- but then again, it's a bit hard to see why anyone would want him, especially if we assume that he never does catch fire in Iowa.

That leaves Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. Both, I think, would be perfectly reasonable running mates, at least assuming that they survive the remainder of the nomination contest without hurting themselves. Still, neither seems especially likely. If Romney wins, he probably wants someone who will spark genuine enthusiasm among conservatives. Should Perry prevail (or I suppose if Newt or one of the others wins after all), it's a little hard to see Romney as the logical choice. Sure, there would be an impulse to make nice with Washington Republicans who didn't support the campaign. But Romney, while gradually winning the support of Washington Republicans, isn't really "of" them in the way that George H.W.  Bush was in 1988 or Bob Dole in 1996. Plus he'd be a two-time loser (granted, so was Joe Biden).

But the real story here is that the energy of the GOP isn't up there on stage in the presidential nomination fight; it's among the new crop of Governors and Senators, especially the ones elected in 2010. There's going to be a lot of pressure from Tea Partiers and others to select one of them. It's risky -- my advice to all presidential nominees is to select someone who has already been vetted by the presidential nomination process. And perhaps the experience of Sarah Palin will put a little pause into the selection this time around. Still, I'm finding it hard to see any of the current contenders winding up in the #2 spot.

Rubio and Veepstakes

I'm not sure how big a deal the WaPo story about Marco Rubio "embellishing" the facts of his family history will turn out to be for Rubio's career; that his parents left Cuba before Castro instead of fleeing Communist oppression might matter to some, but it's not as if he faked military service or gave himself bogus educational credentials.

The oddity of the Rubio situation is that I don't recall such an obvious VP frontrunner in any previous cycle. Now, preseason Veepstakes is notoriously silly; after all, guessing the pick even when there's just a few weeks to go and we know who is doing the picking rarely works out well. And the usual caveat applies: the bottom of the ticket doesn't really matter very much in November. So I'm not speculating about whether Rubio will actually get the nod. But it is, I think, worth pointing out that near as I can tell there's been a pretty solid consensus that Rubio is the obvious selection, and that such a consensus is unusual. My guess is that this story doesn't really shake the current consensus -- although whether everyone's expectations now have anything to do with who actually gets the pick is unknown and unknowable.

What does matter about VP selections is that it's a major boost towards actually becoming president someday; a lot of vice presidents have become president one way or another, and even losing VP nominees are often serious presidential contenders in future cycles.

The other thing to say about VP selections is that they've changed over time as nomination politics changed. It used to be that the second spot was a bargaining chip that a nominee could trade for support at the convention. That meant that it was far more of a party selection than it has become. Now, it's purely the pick of the nominee, made well after the nomination is wrapped up. There's still some party constraint; the nominee certainly doesn't want important party factions to get upset, and at the extreme case it's possible that the convention delegates could cause a very visible fuss, although remember that delegates are usually selected for their loyalty to the nominee. And of course the nominees themselves are creatures of very partisan candidacies.

At any rate, as I said I suspect that the Rubio expectations will survive this with very little damage; as Dave Weigel argues, there's not really a lot to this particular story. Whatever that eventually means to the nominee.

Out of Season Veepstakes Talk

Since it's now thoroughly appropriate to talk about the GOP nomination battle, I guess to be inappropriate we have to start speculating about the second spot on the ticket. 

(You think it's too early for nomination talk?  Sorry.  It's going on right now; by this time next year, it might be over, for all we know, as it basically was on both sides in 2000). 

Anyway, a little while back Mason Herron had a good piece over at Frum Forum knocking down the idea that Chris Christie is a strong candidate for a 2012 presidential nomination, but I wanted to disagree with this bit:

Christie has unequivocally stated that he will not run in 2012. Although he did spend this recent election season campaigning for other candidates, he has not taken the steps necessary for potential presidential contenders, so it appears we can take Christie at his word. As for the possibility of a potential vice presidential bid, I wouldn’t bet on it. Although potential candidates often declare that their priority is their home state without meaning it, I take Christie at his word; he’s well aware of the monumental obstacles that his state still has to overcome, and he seems determined to finish what he started.

This is terrible advise, on two counts.   First of all, if "what he started" looks good enough to get him the VP slot in 2012, then he'd be smart to get out: if things go well, he'll still get the credit for everything working out, while if things go downhill, the next governor will take the blame.  Part of the idea here is that, for better or worse, elected officials only have limited ability to control anything.  Governors, of course, have almost no ability to control the larger economy, and their ability to control the state's public policy is limited by other players in the state government as well as constraints from the federal government.  So ambitious governors who have "earned" a good reputation at any particular moment are wise to get out before the bad times to come.

More generally, anyone offered a VP nomination should take it.  Would Richard Nixon have been president if he had passed on the VP nod in 1952?  Would George H.W. Bush have been president?  Even Bob Dole might never have become a presidential contender, and eventually a nominee, had he passed in 1976.

Of course, there are other paths to a nomination, as Barack Obama and John McCain can tell you, and a VP nomination is especially useful if it leads to actually becoming VPOTUS.  Dole is the only losing VP nominee in the modern era to eventually be nominated for president (Muskie, Shriver, Ferraro, Bentsen, Kemp, Lieberman, and Edwards all fell short).  Every elected VP from Nixon through Al Gore (Nixon, Johnson, Humphrey, Mondale, Bush, Gore), however, was eventually nominated for president except for Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle.  But of the losing group, it's hard for me, anyway, to see any of them having done better had they not gone the VP route.  And remember -- everyone who turns down a VP nod is not only failing to seize an opportunity, but is also giving an opportunity to someone else.  Besides, while one out of eight (Dole, that is, and twenty years later at that) may seem like terrible odds, in fact far fewer than one out of eight eligible Senators or Governors ever wind up as presidential nominees. 

So, given the choice between staying a governor to "finish the job" and accepting a VP nomination, my advice to pretty much anyone would be to go VPOTUS, all the way.  Anyone, that is, who wants to be president.  I'm sure there are people who get mentioned for the #2 job who really don't want to be #1.  Or at least, I'm sure it's theoretically possible.

Catch of the Day

I was thinking of doing a post on this, but I can't top Mori Dinauer:

Wouldn't it be great if we lived in a world where presidents facing a potentially tough re-election could simply turn to the op-ed pages of The Washington Post and find campaign advice two years in advance? Thankfully, Barack Obama lives in that world and can take David Ignatius' recommendation -- he calls it a "second-term masterstroke" -- to choose Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Although the column doesn't actually present any evidence that vice presidents make a difference, we can just assume that this is good advice because we can trust newspapers to describe political reality without resorting to baseless speculation.

Needless to say, there is no such evidence.  On the other hand, while we don't have much evidence concerning what happens when a president dumps his VP for no good reason, we do have two historical cases of presidents asking their entire cabinets to resign: Nixon after winning reelection, and Carter after the malaise speech.  Safe to say that neither one worked out well.  Also safe to say that there are somewhere on the order of zero Americans who are unhappy with Barack Obama but would change their minds if Hillary Clinton was demoted from Secretary of State to VP.