The March issue of The American Prospect has a cover story about Clinton and Obama entitled: "The Dems’ Choice: The Manager or the Visionary." The reason that so many Dems want to see a "dream ticket" is that the complementary attributes of the candidates are clear to see. She’s the wonky manager, he’s the inspiring visionary. She’s short on charisma, he’s short on details. Together, at least theoretically, they’d make a great team. It can’t happen, and you can blame the American political system for dashing our hopes. If you permit a little government lesson, you’ll see why.
In the executive function of government there are two roles: the Head of State and the Head of Government. The HoS is a unifying figure who represents the country and sets broad policy goals, and usually has the final say in matters of foreign policy. The HoG is an administrator-type who leads the cabinet and rest of the bureaucracy and has more input over domestic/economic issues. In a country like France or Russia, the president (elected by the whole country) is the Head of State (and the person you would have heard of) while a prime minister (either the majority leader of the legislature or a presidential appointee) is the Head of Government.
The problem with the presidential system is that we have one person who fulfills both the Head of State and Head of Government roles. The reason this is bad is because the roles are very different and call for different skills and attributes. Most presidents excel at one and not the other. For example, Kennedy was good at unifying the country and providing vision, while Johnson actually accomplished far more from a policy standpoint. Reagan was a unifying figure who resuscitated American confidence and optimism but left the details to others; in contrast, George H.W. Bush was a career manager who by his own admission was bad at "the vision thing."
At a debate in January, Obama said he didn’t equate the presidency with being a Chief Operations Officer, which Clinton missed when she replied "You know, I do think that being president is the Chief Executive Officer." The distinction is this: the Head of State is like a CEO, the Head of Government is like the COO. [Good explanation of CEO/COO in the context of the debate here.]
In the modern American presidency, the visionary president can see the big picture, lead the country, and find a capable chief of staff to be the COO and manage the details. On the other hand, the manager president will not be able to lead the country and will find themselves embroiled in the minutiae of governing, leading to frustration, burnout, and public disappointment (see Carter, Jimmy. I could go on about executive branch organization styles, but you get the point.) It is exceptionally rare to find a president who can be an effective visionary and manager. In the twentieth century, probably only Franklin Roosevelt could be described that way.
So why not the dream ticket? Why can’t we have both? The answer is, the Vice Presidency is not designed to be a management position. It is a political office, and the president must have absolute loyalty in their chief of staff, including the ability to fire them if they are not effective. A VP-as-COO could completely undermine the president, especially in the second term when the president is a lame duck and the VP is preparing for their own presidential run.
In the end, we have to make the most of the system we have. You can vote for a visionary president, and hope that they will find the best managers. You certainly can’t do it the other way around.