I haven't seen this diaried yet, apologies if it has.
This is reported in the The Daily News:
Officials: Obama begins veep search
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Updated Thursday, May 22nd 2008, 10:22 AM
WASHINGTON - Likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama has begun a top-secret search for a running mate, fresh signs that the general election campaign is well under way and the primary race against Hillary Rodham Clinton is basically over.
Obama has asked former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson to begin vetting potential vice presidential picks, Democratic officials said Thursday. Johnson did the same job for Democratic nominees John Kerry in 2004 and Walter Mondale in 1984.
My immediate reaction is that if Obama has picked Jim Johnson to do the VP vetting and Kerry and Mondale both dis "so well", how can Obama be expected to pick the right VP?
The AP story ends with:
Obama's campaign refused to talk about who was being considered, but possible options are Clinton; governors such as Arizona's Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Tim Kaine of Virginia; foreign policy experts like former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd or Delaware Sen. Joe Biden; or other senators such as Missouri's Claire McCaskill and Virginia's Jim Webb.
He could look outside the party to people such as war critic and Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel or independent New York mayor Mike Bloomberg. Or he could look to one of his early prominent supporters such as former Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota or try to bring on a Clinton supporter like Indiana's Evan Bayh.
Johnson's role running the veep process was first reported on TheAtlantic.com.
Hopefully the Hagel and Bloomberg ideas are just the drunken fantasy of the AP writer and don't come from Jim Johnson.
But considering that Kerry made the unsuccessful chooice of John Edwards for VP Jim Johnson doesn't have much of a track record.
I know, to many people here John Edwards can do no wrong. But the John Edwards of the 2008 presidential race is a far different John Edwards from the 2004 presidential race. I don't think there is a single state that can be credited to have gone for the Kerry/Edwards ticket because of Edwards.
One year ago, Robert Shrum reminisced:
Kerry had asked Jim Johnson to head up the vice-presidential search. Jim, my friend stretching back to the 1972 campaign, was one of Washington's best connected "wise men"—at times successively, and at times simultaneously, not only chairman of the giant mortgage company Fannie Mae, but of the Kennedy Center and the Brookings Institution; he had been Gore's chief debate negotiator in 2000, and was a likely treasury secretary or White House chief of staff in a Kerry administration. The candidate was obsessed with keeping the veep process closely held to prevent the speculation and leaks that had embarrassed him when he was on Gore's final list in 2000. This worked—until the last hour.
When I handed Johnson a memo about advertising to be rolled out right after the choice was announced, I included a contingency for "a VP selection... from outside the present battleground states." Johnson and I both knew that meant North Carolina—and Edwards—but Kerry and Teresa still weren't there.
After "getting there", Kerry regretted having picked John Edwards
And who remembers Mondale's running mate?
Yep, none other than the now infamous then U.S. Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro. While the choice of a woman VP candidate was a bold move, Ferraro was not a good candidate or campaigner and did not help the ticket in any measurable way.
Time Magazine reported:
A female running mate (more probably Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro of New York than Mayor Feinstein) is becoming increasingly possible. Mondale's political adviser John Reilly said a female candidacy would offer national appeal. "It cuts across geography," he noted.
But with Mondale from Minnisota, at the time I didn't think a US Representative from New York with only a few terms was a very good choice.
Ferraro of course claimed that her campaign helped Mondale.
But remember the tax statement problems? The Wikipedia entry has:
During the campaign financial questions were raised surrounding the release of Ferraro's husband's tax returns. In July 1984, she said she would release both her and her husband's tax returns. A month later she said she would release only her returns, then she said her husband would release "a financial — a tax statement" on August 20. But Zaccaro initially refused to do so.[14] After the election the House Ethics Committee "found that Ferraro had violated the Ethics in Government Act by failing to disclose details of her family's finances", but "concluded that she acted without 'deceptive intent'." [15]
John McCain seems to have forgotten this. (But I digress.)
Has Jim Johnson learned from the mistakes of Ferraro and Edwards and can he really help Obama with picking a VP? I doubt it.