Veepstakes

I promised a friend a week or so ago that I would post about potential Vice Presidential picks, and though it has taken me some time, here is that promised post.

For most of the post-war period, the process of choosing a running mate was driven by the idea of "geographic balance." This was the thought that if the guy at the top of the ticket was from the North then the number 2 had better be from the South. If your Presidential candidate was from the West, then Veep should be an Easterner, etc. You can see that pattern in most of the post-war tickets from 1952 with Stevenson (Illinois) and Sparkman (Alabama) to 1960 with Kennedy (MA) and Johnson (TX) to 1980 with Reagan (CA) and Bush (sort of New England, sort of TX).

The idea that you needed to balance the ticket with people from different regions is still has a lot of resonance among veteran politicos. Unfortunately for them, "regional balance" just doesn't come into play much anymore. Consider the past 4 presidential elections. Here are the the eight tickets from 1992 to 2004:

1992 - Clinton/Gore vs. Bush/Quayle
1996 - Clinton/Gore vs. Dole/Kemp
2000 - Gore/Lieberman vs. Bush/Cheney
2004 - Kerry/Edwards vs. Bush/Cheney

Out of those eight tickets, one could conceivably categorize half of them as regionally balanced. The Clinton/Gore tickets, of course weren't balanced. They were both southerners. The Bush/Cheney ticket wasn't so balanced, unless you can argue that Wyoming brings a lot of regional heft to the table.

The other four all have some degree of regional balance. Now a couple of points. First, and most obviously, in each of the past four elections, the non-regionally balanced ticket prevailed over the "balanced" one. Second, though the Democratic tickets in 2000 and 2004 appear to ft the traditional mold, in these cases regional considerations were not really at the top of the list when the Presidential candidates were choosing their running mate. In Gore's case, he was looking for someone who didn't have the tarnish of the Clinton campaign and he found it in the Democratic Senator who was first to denounce, on the Senate floor, the President's Oval Office behavior. Choosing Lieberman, Gore Hoped, would inoculate his campaign from some guilt by association problems.

Kerry, too, wasn't thinking about the Civil War when he picked John Edwards. He knew that the Carolinas were beyond his reach no matter the VP. Rather, Senator Kerry needed youth and vigor on his ticket. He needed Edwards' charisma, not his state.

In fact, it really seems like, while regional balance is out, the general concept of balance is still very much in. Clinton, for his first run in 1992, needed a partner who had a reputation for scrupulous morals since Clinton himself didn't quite have that reputation. He also wanted someone who was more familiar to the Beltway and Democratic establishment than he was as governor of Arkansas. Gore was a perfect fit for that kind of balance.

Bush, in 2000, needed "gravitas" and someone who could help him navigate the unfamiliar Washington terrain. Cheney balanced out his ticket in that way.

So, balance is still the watchword, but regional, not so much.

Now, all that being said, there will still be enormous pressure on both nominees to choose a VP based on regional concerns. That would be, in my estimation a mistake, but the pressure will be there.

Keeping all of this in mind, who will be on the short list for each candidate? My thoughts on that in an upcoming post...