Political Rambling

I know that the Democratic nomination for president has not been decided yet and it won’t until the Democratic convention, but I am wondering who from that list of people on the sidebar that never got very far and had to drop out of the race will be ressurected to run as a VP?

About a year ago I thought a Clinton-Obama ticket was a good idea. I thought Hillary Clinton was more experienced and Barack Obama was more visionary and could spend time as VP and learn the ropes. I was terribly wrong. Hillary Clinton is not any more experienced, she is just more aggressive, and those are not the same skill. I now think that if Barack Obama became Hillary’s VP running mate he would be bannished from any real governing and her subsequent mistakes and mis-management would tarnish his career ala Al Gore. This would be a career ending move for Barack.

I do think though that the flip side situatuion might work. If Barack has the upper hand by being President he can and will keep Hillary in line and maybe teach her something about real people’s needs rather than just politicking and power in Washington. She would still get the notoriety by being the first lady as Vice President and would not be able to get into too much trouble or cause too much damage. Although Barack would have to establish the rules first and enforce them constantly because she is so hard to keep out of trouble. It’s what happens when egos run wild.

As far as John McCain goes, he has a connundrum also with who to choose as a VP. He can’t choose anyone middle of the road or mainstream because he would really alienate all the super conservative base people and he would loose their votes. What could be more dangerous though would be if he went and chose someone like Mike Huckabee who is an extreme conservative right guy. That would alienate the even larger base of normal middle of the road republicans who you don’t think he can loose, but he could. Either way he would have to attract more democrats to vote for him to replace whichever part of the Republican party that doesn’t like his VP. And if you remember anything about the show The West Wing, you know that the VP is a totally arbitrary position that has nothing to do with governing on a day to day basis. People who run together usually don’t even like eachother and potentially have completley different ideas. But thanks to the law the president has all the power and the VP has none, unless he has to take over in the unlikley event that something happens to the president. 99.9% of the time the VP is just a figurehead and diplomat.

So, maybe we shouldn’t base our vote on the VP at all? Maybe we should just pick a President and not worry about the VP this year in 2008? What do you think?