The Spectator
Washington's Favourite Unimportant Parlour Game: The Veepstakes
By Alex Massie
The American presidential campaign is in one of its few fallow periods just now. Which means it is time for a favourite quadrennial pastime: the Veepstakes! Who will Mitt Romney choose to be his running-mate? Rob Portman of Ohio? Marco Rubio of Florida? Chris Christie of New Jersey? Someone else entirely? Who can tell but does it matter anyway?
And that, as Mike Crowley points out, is the small secret lurking behind most of the press coverage of this mini-drama: most of the time the identity of the Vice-Presidential nominee isn't worth even the famous bucket of warm spit. Very few people even consider, far less are swayd by, the Vice-Presidential pick and the success or failure of these running-mates is usually suject to the post hoc propter hoc fallacy.
Thus Bill Clinton's "double-down" tango with Al Gore - two southern, wonkish, "New Democrats" - is judged a success because Clinton won the 1992 election. Similarly, George W Bush's choice of Dick Cheney, a veteran Washington hand who lent experienc and "gravitas" to the inexperienced, even callow and incurious, Bush, was deemed a success once the Supre Court ruled in Dubya's favour.
Perhaps most infamously, John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin is now considered a disaster because Mrs Palin, whatever her other attributes, was plainly not ready to become President should something untoward have happened to the 72-year old McCain. The Palin problem, however, was greater than her unfitness for office; rather it was the manner in which her presence on the ticket contradicted the McCain campaign's argument for experience over youth and country before party. Palin undermined the rationale upon which the McCain campaign was based.
Even so, the Palin effect has probably been exagerrated. Would a different running-mate have helped McCain win Ohio or Virginia or North Carolina? It is hard to see how it would. Moreover, selecting Palin was a response to unpromising circumstances: McCain needed to make a splash, shake the game up and hope that a mighty gamble might pay off. And for a week or two and until she starting talking to the press it looked as though it might even work. Would Senator Joe Lieberman, McCain's preferred choice, have made any difference? Unlikely. On the contrary, the press would have enjoyed the contrast between Obama and al all-white, all-pensioner ticket. Heads you lose and tails you lose too.
So the evidence is weak that even a disastrous selection has a meaningful impact on the election. Romney's chances are unlikely to be transformed - for good or ill - by his choice. Nor, as Nate Silver suggests, is therenecessarily any great electoral benefit to choosing a Veep from a swing-state. That said, a two point bump in, say, Ohio could make some difference to Romney's prospects.
The Palin debacle, however, will help nsure Romney picks someone who could plausibly be seen as a plausible President in the event of emergency. That tilts the balance of probability towards selecting a Veep with some executive experience. Most of all, however, Romney should probably pick someone with whom he is comfortable and whom he can trust and who will not overshadow the nominee himself. The Veep should not be the star of the show and this, I fancy, makes it less, not more, likely that Romney will pick Rubio.
That leaves the likes of Portman, Christie and, perhaps, New Mexico's Susana Martinez as the most probable candidates. But this is a Washington parlour game that, though traditional and much-enjoyed, is generally less important than the acres of newsprint devoted to it would have you believe. It is most unlikely to determine the result of the election, no matter how much anyone triies to persuade you otherwise.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/7821124/washingtons-favourite-unimportant-parlour-game-the-veepstakes.thtml
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