CAMPAIGN OUTSIDER
McCain's supremely cynical VP option
By Muhammad Cohen March 12, 2008
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JC12Aa01.html
HONG KONG - While the Democrats escalate their catfight, the next item
of interest for Republican insiders is John McCain's vice presidential
choice. Suggestions for the Arizona senator's running mate range from
the sublime to Condoleezza Rice.
"This job isn't worth a pitcher of warm spit," Franklin Roosevelt's
vice president John Nance Garner famously declared, and despite all
the fuss made about choosing a running mate, the second name on the
ticket usually has about the same impact. Unless, of course, that
pitcher flies in the face of a listener or that choice flies in the
face of convention, or at least conventional wisdom.
Since McCain will be 72 years old on election day (ages on that date
cited throughout), the conventional wisdom says his vice presidential
choice will matter more than usual. The age factor not only increases
the risk McCain could die in office, but that he could decide against
a second term, leaving his vice president as the favorite to run in
2012. If you're on the other end of McCain's phone call offering the
second spot on the ticket, though, keep in mind that three far younger
recent presidents - John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton -
left office, or nearly did, against their will. Still, McCain, who
likes to say he's "older than dirt", needs a more youthful running
mate.
Gender, racial preferences
Conventional wisdom also says that because he's a white man facing a
black man or white woman (barring some extraordinary occurrence) at
the top of the other ticket, McCain should have a female or minority
(or both) on his ticket. Since McCain is a senator - and his wife runs
the family business he married into - he should have a governor or
someone with an administrative background. Since McCain is a moderate
Republican, he should have a rock-solid conservative on the ticket.
Since he represents a western state, McCain should tap an easterner,
preferably from a swing state that the running mate could tip into
McCain's corner.
No one fits all of those criteria. McCain's former rival for the
nomination Mitt Romney may tick the most boxes. Given his amazing
reversals of belief between governing Massachusetts and running for
president, a bit of gender bending or a race change shouldn't be
beyond Romney. There's little hope he could deliver Massachusetts to
the Republicans, but his father George was governor of Michigan, Mitt
won the primary there in January, and Democrats could suffer in the
state due to the fight over the primary date that's left the state
without any voice for choosing the nominee.
But it wouldn't be a perfect marriage: McCain can't stand Romney, and
nearly everyone knows it, especially Romney. As vice president, Romney
could look forward to four years of snubs and worse. Moreover, sup****t
for Romney, who vastly outspent Republican rivals during his primary
run, is millimeters deep. I wouldn't put him on the short list.
McCain's last standing rival, Mike Huckabee, became everyone's
favorite evangelical during his campaign. It's hard not to like a
bass-plucking Baptist preacher. But some Huckabee stances - he doesn't
believe in evolution - scare moderates, and he puts the fear of god in
fiscal conservatives who believe on the seventh day the Almighty
pledged, "No new taxes".
Crist almighty?
Virtually every Republican governor has gotten at least a glance as a
McCain running mate. One of the favorites is Florida's Charlie Crist.
He first came to national attention as state attorney general "Chain
Gang Charlie", advocating reinstatement of putting inmates to work
outdoors shackled together. Florida is a key state to win - ask Al
Gore - Crist is enormously popular, 52 years young, and very tight
with McCain. During his 2006 gubernatorial run, Crist asked President
George W Bush to stay away while welcoming McCain.
But Crist may be a bit too much of a maverick for the Republican
knucklewalkers McCain hopes to energize. As attorney general, Crist
bucked the far-right fringe by respecting Teri Schiavo's right to die
in that ugly case. And, like McCain, he's one of these family values
guys who's been divorced (a year after marrying his one and only wife
.... hmmm). As governor, he's tangled with insurance companies, so
there goes the free market vote. Both of those crowds would prefer
Florida's ex-governor Jeb Bush, but with the Democrats trying to
****tray McCain as George Bush's third term, there's no way the name
Bush would go on his ticket.
As in Michigan, the Democrats' struggle over Florida's unauthorized
early primary could give the GOP an edge. Add that Crist's
fingerprints are all over the scheme to move the dates, and Crist can
probably help McCain more advocating at home than becoming a national
target.
Pennsylvania's ex-governor Tom Ridge is considered an economics and
administrative whiz, cutting taxes in Pennsylvania while creating a
surplus. Even the private sector thinks he's got something on the
ball; he's a director at Home Depot, Hershey and several security
related ventures.
Ridge's last government post was as the first secretary of Homeland
Security in the Bush administration. The department has gotten less
than rave reviews across the political spectrum for its organization
and execution, and Ridge verged on national joke with his color-coded
security alerts. For all his attributes, putting him on the ticket
could invite questions about national security, otherwise a slam dunk
for McCain.
Cowboys and Punjabis
Beyond white guys, the field gets a lot more interesting. McCain can
outflank Democrats in the minority derby with newly elected Louisiana
Governor Bobby Jindal. The 36-year-old Roman Catholic son of Punjabi
immigrants, Jindal is a darling of Rush Limbaugh.
Before winning the governor****p on his second try, Jindal was twice
elected to Congress. He's also worked on healthcare issues at the
state and national levels, and his knowledge in this area could negate
Democrats' perceived advantage. At Louisiana's Health and Hospitals
Department, the state Medicaid budget went from deficit to surplus;
don't ask me how a state program aiding the poor runs a surplus, but
conservatives eat it up. He's also a strong advocate of offshore oil
drilling. Put aside your doubts about his readiness to be president
and star this longshot in your program.
Alaska's Sarah Palin is lauded as the nation's most popular governor
with approval ratings consistently in the 80s and 90s since taking
office in 2006. Even my Democratic friends in Alaska give her high
marks for sweeping out the state's corrupt establishment, one activist
calling her "the anti-Condi". Point guard Palin led her basketball
team to a state high school champion****p, she was voted Miss
Congeniality in the Miss Alaska pageant, her eldest son enlisted in
the US Army last September 11, and her husband works in the oil
fields. She blends folksy populism, anti-tax orthodoxy, and a
libertarian bent.
She's also one candidate who deserves the label pro-life, and that
likely takes her out of vice presidential sweepstakes. Last week,
Palin announced that, at age 44, she's pregnant with her fifth child,
due in May.
If "anti-Condi" is out, what about the original with her two-fer as a
black female? Condoleezza Rice's performance as national security
advisor - dismissing that August 2001 memo warning "Bin Laden
determined to attack inside the United States" with "It wasn't
something that we felt we needed to do anything about" - her errors
(or lies) about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction sup****ting the
invasion, and her lackluster steward****p of the State Department may
have finally convinced the public she's a serial incompetent who keeps
failing upward in the finest Bush administration tradition.
Recall that she was president Bush's top advisor on the Soviet Union
when the Berlin Wall fell; the US was no better able to deal with the
Soviet collapse than Mikhail Gorbachev. Rice, 54, has never run for
public office, and, with a manner as brittle as her hair, it's hard to
imagine her standing up to the scrutiny of a presidential race. Unless
of course, as her performance and her name suggest, Rice really is a
Chinese agent.
Colin Powell is a black who's never run for office but is widely,
warmly admired. But he's nearly as old as McCain, 71, and says he
doesn't want the job. After serving as the nation's top military
commander and secretary of state, Powell likely doesn't relish a
pitcher-of-spit post. Powell may have been as badly damaged as Rice by
his association with the Iraq invasion. More im****tantly,
neo-conservatives still haven't forgiven Powell for not ousting Saddam
Hussein in the first Gulf War in 1991.
Hail Mary play
Former Oklahoma quarterback and congressman J C Watts is a friend of
McCain. But he didn't make a lot of other pals in Wa****ngton during
eight years on Capitol Hill. Although he keeps his finger in politics
as a pundit, Watts seems more content to be in private sector. Even
though he's just 50, there's a sense that, eight years removed from
his last campaign, Watts' time may have passed.
Is there a black man out there who would firm up McCain's right flank,
get love from the Republican establishment, and, unlike Rice, at least
potentially appeal to African-Americans? Yes, and he's been hiding in
plain sight since 1991.
At its heart, the vice presidential choice is a cynical, craven appeal
to voters. On one hand, the vice presidential nominee is supposed to
be ready for the presidency, and voters can even prefer the running
mate to headliner. But the presidential nominee absolutely, positively
doesn't want the vice president to become president. The Clintons
raised the cynical art form to a new low in recent days with their
suggestions of Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama as Hillary
Clinton's running mate while questioning his fitness for the top job.
But when it comes to cynicism in politics featuring race, one name
should leap to mind: Clarence Thomas. Thomas is the ****-crazed office
masher Poppy Bush nominated to the Supreme Court when the nation's
first black justice, monumental civil right pioneer Thurgood Marshall,
stepped down. Bush called then 43-year-old Thomas "the most qualified
candidate" - although the American Bar Association denied him a
"qualified" rating - and said race had nothing to do with the
appointment. (Any God worth his salt would have turned Bush into a
pillar of it then and there.) At the darkest moment of his
confirmation hearings, Thomas flung the race card onto the table,
claiming ***ual harassment allegations against him were "a high-tech
lynching of uppity blacks".
When I first imagined Thomas as a vice presidential nominee, I thought
he'd lend McCain's ticket symbolism, a bit of ideological and racial
counterbalancing, while secreting himself in chambers. But this
weekend, by chance I caught Thomas' 60 Minutes interview from last
September and saw how Thomas has honed his oratory since those
confirmation hearings.
Thomas, beneficiary of racial preferences, makes an articulate,
superficially compelling argument about why he wants to close those
doors to other minority members. Thomas claims from his perch on the
Supreme Court - where his vote, among other things, decided the 2000
presidential election - that those preferences never helped him. Rice
suffers from the same delusion, but she can't express it with the
narrative of scrabbling in the swamps of Georgia and a freedman's plot
in Savannah that Thomas can. He would be an asset on the campaign
trail.
But the most cynical part of putting Thomas on the ticket is perhaps
the most appealing to Republican grandees. As a sitting Supreme Court
Justice, appointed for life and virtually untouchable, Thomas would
have to be nuts to trade that job for the vice presidency. But that
doesn't mean he can't run for the office while keeping his Supreme
Court seat. It's possible that he could serve as vice president and a
Supreme Court justice at the same time, but the simpler solution would
be to resign as vice president if he's elected.
Trent Lott won re-election to a six-year term as Mississippi senator,
but resigned a year later to become a lobbyist. Thomas would simply be
setting the clock further ahead. Thomas' resignation in November would
let McCain pick from a large field of Republican worthies likely to be
out of work after the November vote. A pitcher of spit that's a
heartbeat from the presidency looks pretty good if you're unemployed.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America’s story to
the world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air
(www.hongkongonair.com), a novel set during the 1997 handover about
television news, love, betrayal, high finance and cheap lingerie.
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