Veep Search

06 June 2008 |permalink | email article

Obama’s selection of a vice presidential search committee will offer some clues about what his campaign is thinking in terms of a running mate – and its composition suggests that Hillary Clinton may not be a slam dunk.

The members include JFK daughter Carolina Kennedy, who has been very involved in the campaign; Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, and Eric Holder, who served as deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton. Keep your eye on Johnson.

The campaign said Obama will work closely with the trio over the next several weeks but “this will be his decision and his alone.”

Worth noting is a Washington Post column this week by Lou Cannon, the paper’s retired political reporter who covered Ronald Reagan both as California governor and as president, on what role Clinton might role in helping elect Obama.

Cannon suggests that Gerald Ford when to his grave believing that Reagan’s challenge for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 cost him the White House.

He believes that Reagan made Ford a better candidate, much as Clinton’s challenge has sharpened Obama in 2008.

What damaged Ford in trying to overtake Democrat Jimmy Carter was not what Reagan did for him in the spring of 1976 but what he failed to do in the fall. While Reagan endorsed the ticket, he campaigned only grudgingly.

Ford would have been elected if he had won Ohio and Mississippi, instead of losing each by a few thousand votes. But the former president did campaign for Reagan in 1980.

Cannon’s important question is whether Clinton “will campaign hard for Obama among constituencies where she can help him.”

Quote for the Day

“There’s no bargaining. You don’t bargain with the Presidential nominee. Even if you’re Hillary Clinton and you have 18 million votes, you don’t bargain – Ed Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania and a key Clinton supporter.

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