Hillary-Obama Ticket

Anna Quindlen, writing for MSNBC.com, practically begs Hillary to select Barack Obama has her running mate:

July 23, 2007 issue -

TO: HRC
RE: VP

Well, senator, with the "Sopranos"-influenced video gone viral, you managed to convince millions of Americans that you do have a sense of humor. With the continuing massaging of your position on Iraq, you've managed to convince a significant number of liberals that you have a sense of urgency about the war. And with the most recent poll results, you must have a sense of yourself as the front runner.

Now it's time to show that you have a sense of history, a sense that this election is bigger than just one woman's ambitions. Make it your business to persuade Barack Obama to be your running mate.

Conventional thinkers like to make this sound risky, pairing a woman and a black man on the ticket. But it's not as wild as it sounds. The calculus of choosing someone for the second spot is always, first and foremost, whether the choice hurts your chances. The answer here is no. Anyone who would be put off by Obama isn't going to vote for you in the first place.

The second question is what you gain. The way in which that has been interpreted has usually been tediously predictable, and has centered on geographic balance. That's how John Kerry of Massachusetts wound up with Southerner John Edwards.

And how did that work out? Shouldn't President Kerry and Vice President Edwards be running for reelection about now?

Voters don't choose a presidential ticket because it might be a historical pairing. If they did, Geraldine Ferraro would have become Vice President in 1984. Instead, her ticket took a pounding. The presidency does not rise and fall based on the VP slot. People vote for presidents not Veeps. Do you think a lot of people voted for Reagan because they really loved George Bush? Or voted for Bush because they loved Dan Quayle? Or voted for Nixon because they loved Spiro Agnew? C'mon.

In math a double negative makes a positive, but not in politics. When you add the negatives that Hillary brings to the ticket to the negatives that Obama brings, the result will be lots of reasons not to vote for them and one or the other will give millions of voters a reason to look elsewhere.

One problem with choosing one of the primary losers as the running mate is you give up any sense of excitement or bringing something new to the campaign. Voters have already seen the loser for two years or more and pretty much know everything they need to know about them. Bringing a Veep on board who hasn't been part of the primary campaign adds a sense of freshness to the general election campaign that most candidates are really going to need after two years of campaigning.

Hillary-Obama is a match made in liberal heaven, but out there in flyover country, won't play near as well.