It is almost certainly too late at this point to influence Barack Obama's choice of Vice-President at all, let alone in a diary soon to be buried on this site's Recent List and then shunted off to obscurity. Nevertheless, I want to take a swipe at all of the talk of the strategy behind whom Obama should pick as his running-mate (in which I admit I have been a participant.)
The one good thing that has come out of discussion on this site about this topic is that it has laid bare that, in the words of the political precept, "nobody knows nothing." I can make a case for or against any one of dozens of candidates, on the grounds of their helping or hurting the ticket, with decent plausibility based on characteristics of this year's electorate that I don't actually know, you don't actually know, and we may never be able to determine even after the fact.
Let's leave "helping the ticket" to the people who, at least, have had a chance to poll and focus group it. Let's talk about what really matters.
The two most important things about the Vice-Presidential choice are:
(1) If Obama is unable at some point to serve as President -- and he is of course already a target and implementing good policies will make him more of one -- then the Vice-President will take over, appoint judges, shepherd legislation, cast vetos, and be the person who most guides the party over the next few years.
(2) If Obama appoints someone who is younger than, at least, their mid-60s, then that person becomes the front-running candidate if, as we hope, he leaves office in 2017.
I am not one to say "to hell with electoral considerations"; I am occasionally one, however, to approach them with some humility and admit that I don't really have the ability to fathom them. To some extent they matter: I would not, for example, promote picking Dennis Kucinich or Bernie Sanders or John Conyers or Barbara Boxer, no matter how much I like them. But when we move into the realm of names of potential choices that are apparently being actively considered, the considerations disappear into the fog of political battle. We just don't know -- and we here know much less than does the Obama campaign.
What we can know is this: how do we feel about being governed by one of these people: either in 2017 or -- potentially, tragically -- as early as 2009? (I don't single out Obama in raising that possibility; it exists with every President -- although, in choosing Cheney and more or less following his orders in everything that mattered, Bush took out the best insurance possible against assassination.)
No name under consideration would appeal to me as much as a two-term Obama Presidency, given that the public and the world has now had such a prominent response to Obama. (It's too late to mourn "might-have-beens" about Dodd or Dean or even Gore.) But there's one name that jumps out at me as being someone under whom I would not want to be governed -- Evan Bayh.
The bottom line is: I do not want to be put in the position of having to tear down a sitting Vice-President in 2016 because I can't stomach the thought of his winning. I don't want to have to take on a Vice-President who has been planning his campaign out of the OVP for eight years. I have better things to do with that -- things that involve policy rather than politics.
Tim Kaine, if chosen, may do the same thing, but in his political career he has shown the same degree of thirst for power than Evan Bayh has.
Joe Biden has shown a lot of thirst for power over the years, but may be too old to run in 2016, at least too old to be a presumptive nominee.
Kathleen Sebelius verges on being too old in 2016, but also doesn't seem the type to be plotting her advancement for eight years rather than concentrating on her job for its own sake.
Obama's choice is about the future of our party in many ways, but the most practical one is about whether the Vice-President will be someone who, not so many years form now, we embrace or work to defeat if they attain or run for office. Working to defeat the sitting VP will distract from the Obama Presidency and its agenda. And yet, many of us will have to do it.
Obama may see certain political advantages to choosing Bayh now -- but they are so speculative that they cannot become overriding. The one thing he should realize is that he would pay later for choosing a future party leader -- and leading contender to be nominee -- who so many of us would find to be anathema.
Al Gore's biggest mistake in 2000 was choosing Joe Lieberman to join him on the ticket -- for much these same reasons. I hope that Obama learns from that mistake.