Watching Washington

No Easy Picks for Either Party's VP

Everybody loves playing "Pick the VP" except the people who actually have to pick one. Doing it in real life often turns out to be painful and thankless.

Pick a good running mate and no one remembers the process. Pick a bad one, and no one ever forgets. The search for a vice president always begins as a careful parsing of potential pluses, but it often becomes a rather frantic scramble to minimize the minuses.

Consider the plight of the two presumptive nominees of 2008, John McCain and Barack Obama, whose selection of dance partners now dominates the blogosphere and every political conversation.

Neither man is likely to find his ideal running mate, because ideal candidates do not exist. It may be fun to imagine, for example, a "John and Mary" ticket (or better yet a "John y Maria" ticket). But try finding a Republican woman who has been elected statewide in a sizable state and who endorses the GOP platform stand against abortion.

Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and Elizabeth Dole probably come the closest among current officeholders, although neither quite fills the bill. Hutchison has been slightly heterodox on abortion and has her political sights fixed on Texas. Dole has her hands full with her re-election campaign this fall and would not help McCain on the age front, being one month older.

That's why the name of Sarah Palin comes up. She's the 44-year-old Republican who is the first woman governor of Alaska and that state's youngest governor. Bright and mediagenic and strongly anti-abortion, she's considered a rising star who could find a place on the national stage. But her only previous office was as mayor of Wasilla. And is anyone really worried about the GOP carrying Alaska?

The lack of obvious women to pair with McCain in the political world has prompted the mention of some private sector stars such as Carly Fiorina, 54, the former CEO and chairman at Hewlett-Packard, and Meg Whitman, 51, former CEO of eBay.

Fiorina and Whitman have no political experience other than campaigning for McCain (Fiorina) and Mitt Romney (Whitman) this year. But both exude the air of business acumen often lacking when McCain talks economics himself. Both women are well-known to readers of The Wall Street Journal, but entering the national consciousness in an entirely new way would bring entirely uncertain results.

No woman was included when McCain hosted three potential veeps at his Arizona home last weekend. Romney was included, as was Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (a key backer in a key primary) and the 36-year-old freshly elected governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal. A fourth prospect, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, begged off, citing a scheduling conflict (causing some to conclude the governor was happy with his current job).

But this guest list was not really McCain's short list. Each man was invited as a salute to his own achievements but also as a nod to the constituency each represents. And in the end, none may bring enough on the plus side to make up for the potential downside.

A big part of the VP problem is that prospects who fit one set of criteria perfectly are utterly unacceptable on another. Someone who looks ideal on paper turns out to be poison once picked.

The risks are especially high this year, when both nominees must confront division within their own party ranks. If McCain picks former rival Mike Huckabee as a bridge to social conservatives, does he turn off more moderate Republicans and independents? If he chooses Romney to please economic conservatives, or Crist to win Florida, do evangelicals feel snubbed?

And if he goes for Joe Lieberman, the independent Democrat from Connecticut, does he build consensus or alienate partisans on both sides?

Obama is still wrapping up his nomination, so his VP process is not so far along. But it is no less complicated. He must first decide whether to choose Hillary Clinton as his running mate. If he decides not to, as most now expect, he deepens the disaffection of much of his party. That puts even greater pressure on him to choose another woman, or at least a man who has been an outspoken Clinton backer.

It is clear that other women in the political realm -- Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sibelius, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill -- would bring back many diehard Clinton loyalists in November. But would any of them bring back enough to matter? And which of them could match Clinton's recent appeal to blue-collar white voters, especially in exurban areas?

Obama will have to weigh the appeal of these women against his need for greater credibility on foreign policy and national defense. That gap argues for a higher military profile, such as that of a former general (Wesley Clark) or a war hero senator such as Jim Webb of Virginia.

Others will say nothing does a ticket as much good as a successful centrist governor from a big state, such as Ohio's Ted Strickland or Pennsylvania's Ed Rendell, both prominent Clinton champions, or Mark Warner, a former governor of Virginia now running for the Senate. But each of these men may have limited effect on voters outside their home states.

In the end, both McCain and Obama will probably tap someone highly imperfect who just feels right to the nominee -- someone plausible and compatible who "brings something to the ticket." What that something is will be of lesser consequence.

9:06 AM ET | 05-28-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

McCain Has Little to Show for Head Start

While the war between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has dragged on, John McCain has stood alone on the Republican side of the field. He has had an unparalleled opportunity to define his candidacy, assemble a fall campaign team, shore up his support among the party's core activists and raise the money he needs to compete until his public funding starts to flow in September.

The senior senator from Arizona has dedicated himself to this agenda over the past 11 weeks. And yet today, by some measures, he is further from his goals than when he began.

Consider the matter of staff. McCain began last year with a team of consultants and loyal aides that included many from his failed bid in 2000 (notably John Weaver) and others lured by his frontrunner status for 2008. The McCain campaign went first class and let everyone know it.

But the bills piled up even as the campaign faltered. The issues of age, Iraq and illegal immigration weighed on McCain just as the national media were discovering and celebrating his GOP rivals. By the summer of 2007, the putative frontrunner was broke and dead in the water. A lesser man might have given up.

But the former POW made bold moves to survive and recover. He reduced his staff and cut his costs, allowing him to persist on a pittance compared to the self-financing Mitt Romney and the high-rolling Rudy Giuliani. McCain traveled Iowa as humbly as a local farmer, toured New Hampshire as frugally as a flint-eyed native.

When he won the New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida primaries and the preponderance of big states on Super Tuesday, McCain was back on top. And he soon brought aboard the kind of blue chip Washington big boys who imbue a campaign with the aura of success. No less a presence than Charlie Black, a mega-lobbyist in each of the last three decades, stepped in to take the helm.

But with this new hegemony there should have been an outpouring of dollars from those within the party with the deepest pockets. McCain had the right people making the calls, but the contributions did not flow in the torrent he needed. McCain had also fallen short with the rank and file who respond to direct mail pitches. And when it comes to online giving, both McCain and his party as a whole are still catching up to the Democrats.

Not to worry, the Republicans said. Campaigns sometimes get a slow start. McCain could look to heavyweights such as Tom Loeffler, the former Texas congressman who became his national finance co-chairman and promised to open the coffers of the party's biggest givers. The fiscal picture was going to brighten, and fast.

But then in mid-May a kind of internal mini-scandal swept through the top ranks of the McCain operation. It began when Newsweek reported that Doug Goodyear, McCain's choice to run the Republican convention this summer, worked for a firm that lobbied for the brutally repressive military junta in Myanmar - the government blocking aid to cyclone victims in its own country.

Let's assume for the moment that everyone really does deserve representation in Washington by top-dollar pros, even the oppressive junta ruling in Yangon. Do those same pros also deserve to occupy key slots in the presidential campaign of the presumptive nominee? This conflict might be compromising for any candidate, but McCain built his rep as the scourge of K Street. His repertoire is replete with lobbyist bashing absolutes. The irony is too baroque to be borne.

So Goodyear was gone, as were several others. And then Loeffler joined them. As the kettle reached a full boil, anti-McCain groups such as therealmccain.com were posting extensive dossiers on Black and his claim to have refrained from lobbying his campaign clients after 1984. The Web site had a list of citations for Black's campaign work for the Bush-Cheney tickets as well as for his lobbying of the Bush-Cheney administration.

Some dismiss all such travails as inside baseball, but they interfere with the defining of the McCain candidacy and the shoring up of the conservative base. McCain cannot focus on the course he is setting while battling to keep his campaign vessel upright in the sea.

To be sure, the most immediate challenge for a man with a maverick's rep is to show he can play it straight. McCain needed ways to assuage the disappointment of conservatives who had never cared for him and were making noises about sitting on the sidelines in the fall.

So he set about making himself acceptable, and in this he had the aid of Karl Rove, the erstwhile guru of President George W. Bush, and, indeed, the very consultant who had managed the political knee-capping of McCain himself in the 2000 primaries.

Under Rove's tutelage, the McCain Straight Talk Express has been visiting the touchstones of conservative orthodoxy, such as the federal judiciary ("I will appoint judges who know the law and know their own minds and know the difference") and the refusal to negotiate with enemies abroad. The word "appeasement" has become part of the McCain mantra.

In other words, the new McCain has defined his candidacy largely as a defense of the conservative consensus of the last 30 years -- which for younger voters will be synonymous with the Bush presidency. That will make it easy for the Democrats to say McCain promises nothing but Bush's third term. Indeed, they are already saying just that.

In brief, the drive for more money and party unity has yet to produce either one; and the struggle to define McCain as a candidate has produced schizophrenia within his campaign and a closer-than-ever identification with a poisonously unpopular president.

John McCain may yet be the 44th president of the United States, if only because of weakness and division on the Democratic side. But if he is to succeed, his summer and fall will have to be better than his spring, a season of great promise as yet unfulfilled.

7:21 AM ET | 05-20-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

What Keeps Hillary Going?

By now, no one needs more rehashing of the numbers, but here's the short version: Barack Obama has a virtual lock on the delegates he needs to be the 2008 Democratic nominee for president.

Obama needs only about a third of the delegates at stake in the remaining primaries and about the same share of the uncommitted superdelegates. Barring another outbreak of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama should do substantially better than that in both categories.

So game over. Even the seating of the full delegations from the outlaw primaries in Florida and Michigan is no longer a real threat to Obama's nomination.

So why is Hillary Clinton still barnstorming the country from West Virginia to Oregon (with stopovers in Kentucky and South Dakota) in a vain effort to stop him?

Let's consider a few possible answers.

She doesn't get it. She is drinking the Kool-Aid her aides are serving up on their daily conference call. She thinks the West Virginia primary (with a microscopic 28 delegates) is "critical." She thinks the real number for nomination is 2,209 rather than 2,025 (as the rest of the world thinks), because she really expects Florida and Michigan to be seated without penalty. She thinks she can sell all this to two-thirds of the remaining superdelegates, or else pry loose a lot of pledged delegates who are only part of the process because they are Obama true believers.

(This explanation is not persuasive because we all know Clinton to be a savvy politician with a head for hard numbers. In fact, you could argue, her problem is seeming too savvy and too political. So we must look further for an explanation.)

She thinks Obama will stumble. This represents a far more plausible insight. Perhaps she firmly believes her rival will, in a day or a week or a month, crash into a wall. It may be another round of Wright — worse yet than the first two — or it may be a torpedo of another nature. But somehow she is convinced he will blow up before the convention in Denver in August and she should stand at the ready until then.

(No one can dismiss the prospect of a disaster waiting in the wings for Obama. He remains a little-known rookie making his first bid for national stardom. He has been scrubbed and vetted up to now, but not to the degree he will be as the presumptive nominee. The rough stuff is just beginning, and the Clintons know this better than anyone.)

She wants the second spot on the ticket. While no one in her inner circle may admit to this right now, she has to be considering the upside and downside of being on the 2008 ticket in the No. 2 spot. She has already softened her language regarding her opponent, indicating an interest in moving beyond their rivalry. But she may think she has more leverage on Obama and his decision if she remains a rival for now.

(Is America ready for a troika consisting of Obama, Clinton and Clinton? Make no mistake, taking on one Clinton will mean all the benefits and baggage of both. Perhaps you can picture the threesome at the convention, or in the fall campaign. But in the White House? Still, if this proves the price of peace in the party, or the one way to hold the full Democratic coalition together, it cannot be dismissed out of hand. The real question is: Do Hillary Clinton's voters who say they can't vote for Obama change their minds if she's part of the package?)

She can't stop. Necessity dictates the long campaign because the Clinton campaign is now well into debt. She and her husband have lent at least $11 million from their own resources, and that number will almost surely go much higher. To get that back, the campaign must raise a great deal of money in the weeks ahead. Raising money is nearly impossible under a white flag.

She just doesn't want to stop. This campaign is clearly the culmination of Hillary Clinton's passion and her dream. Not many months ago, she seemed assured of being the first woman nominated. She seemed quite likely to be the first woman president. Now she finds herself beaten, besieged, beleaguered and substantially poorer. To quit now would be to lock in those losses. She keeps on going because to do anything else is to accept a defeat she cannot bring herself to accept.

She wants to stop, but just a little later. You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Judging by the body language and facial expressions the family displayed on stage in Indianapolis on Tuesday, they know their cards won't beat what's on the table. But by waiting for a better night or a better day to quit — after Kentucky and Oregon vote on May 20, or after the last primaries on June 3 — the Clinton team can plot a better trajectory for her future.

(Right now, Hillary Clinton might look forward to running again in 2012 or even 2016. She might also take a look at the New York governorship in 2010. And the talk about her becoming Senate majority leader also persists. Her prospects are still bright. She just needs a little time to stage manage her exit.)

She has reasons known only to her. This is the most intriguing prospect of all. Stay tuned.

12:33 PM ET | 05- 9-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Clinton Borrows from GOP Playbook

Earlier in this primary season, Hillary Clinton warned Democrats that if Barack Obama won the Democratic presidential nod, he would wilt under attacks from the GOP in the fall.

Lately, as if to prove her point, she's been running a pretty good imitation of a Republican campaign herself.

It's not just the video of her chatting up Bill O'Reilly on his conservative TV talk show on Fox News, or the endorsement from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and its wealthy right-wing publisher, Richard Mellon Scaife.

It's more about the issues she's emphasizing and the lines of attack she's opened on her rival.

Lately, her big idea has been to suspend the gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day -- a gas tax holiday. It has become her emblem of solidarity with working families. Never mind that her campaign could not name a single expert who thought this was a good idea. And never mind that it was already the centerpiece of Republican John McCain's anti-recession package.

It was enough that the gas tax idea got applause at rallies and that Obama was opposed. It gave her another chance to portray herself as down-to-earth and Obama as elitist.

Truth is, there are few ways to sound more Republican than by calling for a tax holiday. It plays into the essential Republican contention that taxes are the chief cause of economic discomfort and unfairness for working families and the middle class.

The gas tax is a special case in point. It's been Republican doctrine for generations that taxes crank up the cost of a tank of gas. Some stations used to put out signs listing all the taxes included in the price at the pump. It's not the oil companies who are sticking you up, they seem to be saying, it's the government.

In fact, the 18-cent-per-gallon federal tax does not go up as the cost of gas does, so it becomes a smaller and smaller proportion of the cost we all pay as prices (and oil company profits) hit record levels. And that's not even to mention the ecological arguments for discouraging gas consumption.

None of that matters to the Clinton campaign right now, because the gas tax holiday is not about the economy, the energy crisis or the environment. It's a psychological device to establish empathy. It's this week's version of having the candidate belly up to a blue collar bar for a shot and a beer. Hillary Clinton looked a little ridiculous knocking them back in Pennsylvania, but it was better than the sight of Obama rolling gutter balls. Note to future candidates: power drinking beats bowling because it is very difficult to miss one's mouth.

All this sports bar chatter and the gas tax are temporary gimmicks that will have their day and then pass into history. The larger Clinton strategy is to portray Obama as suspect on the issue of national security.

Remember the red phone ringing at 3 a.m.? It started ringing nearly two months ago and has yet to be answered by any of those sleeping, innocent children, one of who resembles a juvenile version of the junior senator from Illinois. It's a Clinton ad, of course, but the first time you see it you could swear it's an ad for McCain. What could be more familiar than the Republican candidate pillorying the Democrat as a peacenik?

After the April 16 debate in Philadelphia, when Obama complained about the focus of the questions and argumentative nature of the moderators, Clinton all but called him a cry baby. Her next ad on the air was a lecture on all the tough calls a president has to make in the Oval Office, capped with the Truman dictum: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Their assault has been largely successful, as it has been for candidates in both parties over the years. Few now remember, but John F. Kennedy ran against the Eisenhower-Nixon administration in 1960 from the right on national security. Among other things, he decried the supposed superiority of the Soviet nuclear arsenal and the failure to project U.S. power in defense of certain islands off the coast of "Red China."

More recently, the flag-waving and fear-mongering campaigns have been run by conservative activists and ad makers such as Karl Rove, Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes. They have helped the GOP win seven of the last 10 presidential elections by painting a succession of Democratic candidates as liberal, elitist, irreligious, weak and out of touch -- a bad bet for a country striving to hold off foreign enemies.

Theirs is the playbook from which many of the current Clinton tactics seem to have been borrowed. It is a game plan many of Clinton's current advisors have themselves have struggled against in the past. This is their chance to make it their own. And they are making the most of it.

8:23 AM ET | 05- 2-2008 | permalink | e-mail column