In a matter of weeks or months, Barack Obama will select a vice presidential candidate to run with him this fall.
In order to get my head around the complexities of the Vice Presidential Selection Process and potential/desired outcomes, I scoured sites from HuffPost, to DKos/MyDD, Open Left, RCP, electoral college, and others to identify all of the candidates being bandied about as either front-runners or reasonable dark horse contenders. I stuck them all in a spreadsheet.
Next, I went through the same process to identify criteria by which a candidate might be selected.
Below the fold, I include the Top 20 VP candidates being discussed, and a personal ranking with analysis and arguments for why I've placed them where I have. This includes a set of strengths and weaknesses that I've identified for each, using a list of criteria that draw upon two key selection principles.
(cross-posted on Open Left)
These criteria fall into two broad categories, represented by the following principles:
- ELECTORAL STRENGTH OF TICKET: VP should help Obama win electoral votes, or at least not hurt his chances to win them
- CAPABILITY / FUTURE PRESIDENTIAL POTENTIAL: VP should make a good president someday, next election or if Obama leaves office
I added a variety of criteria which affect these principles to the spreadsheet. Here are the criteria I've considered:
CRITERIA, IN VERY APPROXIMATE ORDER OF PRIORITY
Should Be / (Should Not Be)
- Progressive / (Conservative)
- Swing or Red State or Regionally Strong / (Blue State or Regionally Weak)
- Demographically Strong - Race, Gender, Age*
- Charismatic, Good Surrogate / (Boring, Ugly, Awkward, Wonky)
- Democratic / (Republican/Other)
- Obama Supporter / (Clinton Supporter)
- Always Anti-War / (Formerly Pro-War)
- Post-Partisan, Change and Hope message / (Partisan, Cynical)
- Governor / (Senator, Rep, out of office, other)
- Military/Foreign Policy Experience / (None)
- Environment/Other Domestic Policy Strengths / (None)**
- Interested in being VP / (Uninterested)
*demographics could factor both ways - I've weighted "female" as positive electorally, "non-white/minority/young" as mixed, with positive and negative cascading effects
**I place a high premium personally on environmental issues. Keep in mind that my rankings are NOT intended to be predictive of actual outcomes, NOR are they intended to be my interpretation of the best pick representing everyone else's interests - some strengths are more important to me than others, as they doubtless are for you. I hope this provides a useful framework either way.
Candidates included in the analysis include:
- Bayh
- Biden
- Bloomberg
- Brown
- Clark
- Clinton
- Daschle
- Edwards
- Feingold
- Gore
- Kaine
- McCaskill
- Murray
- Napolitano
- Richardson
- Ritter
- Schweitzer
- Sebelius
- Strickland
- Webb
(others that didn't make the cut for me included Pelosi, Dodd, Nunn, Roemer, Hamilton and Hagel)
Here is the link to the VP spreadsheet, with 20 top candidates and analysis!
UPDATED: Sheet now formatted in HTML, here
Please read it over, and weigh in on the comments if you like what you see, think it's intriguing, stupid, unhelpful - whatever ya got!