Veepstakes: Rice/McCain?

This blog tends to ground its vice presidential ticket speculation in a few assumptions based on reporting. The first of them is that is the primary internal criterion is complete trust. The second criterion is that the prospect must possess widely recognized above-the-line national security credentials. Applied to Sec. Rice, her selection by John McCain is most unlikely, as there is no evidence that McCain trusts her. (There is no evidence that he mistrusts her -- but the two are said not to get along all that well.)

Aside from an unusual ability to blind themselves to Rice's evident distaste for politics, and her equally as obvious social moderateness, conservatives do not closely identify her with a set of policites, nor with a wing of their party, nor with a branch of the conservative movement, nor with a philosophy, but with a person -- the man she once errantly referred to her as her husband, George W. Bush.

Conventional wisdom, and the first drafts of history, suggest that she has been a much better Secretary of State than as a facilitator of national security policy, in part because Bush trusts her as an equal.

Comments

Terrible idea, and I hope that McCain isn't even considering it. 0 political experience, Bush-legacy albatross around his neck that he doesn't need, etc.

Posted by Adam | March 12, 2008 1:29 PM

Yes please! That way, McCain won't even be able to pick up the racist vote in November.

Posted by Joe Drymala | March 12, 2008 1:30 PM

If trust is important, why did Kerry pick Edwards or Kennedy pick LBJ? It's clear they didn't trust their choices at all, but made the choice based on strategic grounds.

Posted by Mike | March 12, 2008 1:36 PM

I'd bet that Condi would be unwilling to run under any circumstance and she would especially be unwilling to run just to blacken up a ticket against Obama..something that would probably be a bit insulting to her. I would guess that in the secrecy of the ballot box, she'll vote for Obama too.

Posted by RKA | March 12, 2008 1:37 PM

A McCain/Rice ticket is enough to drive Rush Limbaugh to campaign for Ralph Nader.

No doubt Rice will run, the question is in what direction and how fast.

Posted by D | March 12, 2008 1:44 PM

Palin's McCain's obvious choice. Especially since he can move before Obama can wrap the nomination up.

Posted by Dirk | March 12, 2008 2:12 PM

Romney would be a great VP if he was put to work on a major mess facing America, and tasked with operating out of the VP office and working with both Parties to fix the mess.
Even though the "old wisdom" is that the traditional role of the VP is to cast tiebreakers, sit at the SOTU Adress, see if the President dies or is incapacitated - recent Presidents have realized that the VP is structured in the Constitution to do a great deal more. The VP is also the only other National official elected by all of the People, confirmed by the People not the Senate - which gives them a second reservior of authority & political power that can be put to use.

As opposed to most of the other choices, Romney is not a sitting Gov or Senator who has other duties between now and the election. He has successful executive experience orders of magnitude greater than his VP rivals or whoever heads the Dem ticket. He has also been a person of the highest ethics and someone whose self-funding left him relatively uncompromised by special interests other than the suckup to the supply side voodoo of the cancerous Club for Growth.

Romney has, with America in sad shape because the deep problems have gone on so long without being addressed (at least since the late 80s, when gridlock hit..), ample opportunities to hit the areas he and McCain would agree on, and not end up sitting around useless as VPs once did before Mondale's time. And he has expertise in most of the specific areas of highest urgency of requiring fixes:

1. Health care costs and health insurance. As opposed to talk, Romney and Mass Democrats made a workable interim solution happen. He could lead a bipartisan effort to cut costs and extend health insurance, but keep most of the system in private enterprise and maintain choice of provider.

2. Romney is free, unlike mny Republicans like Cheney, of the oil lobby interests. He is also free of the environmental lobby that has the Dems by the short hairs. He could work to give the US a workable National Energy Plan to be passed by Congress that gives us affordable energy that has been locked up from Americans, demanding industry deliver on conservation as a price of getting Rustbelt recovery, derail NIMBY obstructionists by showing the stark energy needs vs. possible supplies needed to meet those needs and avoid Depression - while starting us on a 30-year transition to sources with little CO2 generation.

3. Keen interest and involvement in repairing Unfair trade policies we signed onto, American competiveness, the race to the bottom in global labor bids, and the failures of students, parents, and teachers to educate on a level the Euros and Asians have attained with less money per pupil.

4. Be a champion of other competent change agents. . Provide critical support for a Team that will try to address the US fiscal mess, entitlements. Romney has done this before. Not be The Individual, but the one who selects a great team and champions it and destroys the roadblocks stopping their fix. A Team run by Bloomberg, Portman, Cox and a few well-respected Democrats like Buffet and championed by Romney would be able to get past Congressional opposition of change and end around special interest money aimed at keeping the failing status quo.

Romney could do #4 and at least ONE of items #1-3.
And benefit if voters saw him recognize he is still a work in progress who would use his VP position to also become more skilled and familiar with "politician speak", with national defense and foreign affairs. That while he could be President tomorrow, there are areas of improvement he needs to work on and he would commit to work hard to do those things to make himself even better ready to be President if McCain becomes unavailable or finishes his one 4-year term.

#5 - Another great strength of Romney is that he has 30+ years of remarkable success selecting or advising others to select the best woman and men possible for a business or situation. And selecting for his own businesses or forms he consults on the young candidates with high potential to lead one day themselves.
By being a VP with clout, Romney could greatly help McCain and the Party avoid the trap of staffing up critical Administration positions with Bush-Style or Little Rock-style Crony Hacks. And selecting stellar young Party members and independents and even Dems for key junior positions that will help develop them to be a generation of great leaders 20 years from now... .

Those thinking a VP must be a Fundie with belief in a 6,000 year old Earth, a person blindly conducting himself as Saint Reagan did 25 years ago, or a brilliant Democrat Party-style racial/gender identity politics pick (Pick Condi, she may have failed terribly as Bush's main advisor but she is a 2-fer! Maybe a 3-fer if she's gay!!) miss the point.

A. The Fundies have commitment that Mccain or Romney if he succeeds McCain would pick strict constructionist judges that would reconsider Roe. That they love Jesus in their hearts or believe in Israel from the Rapture is extranous dressing. Only the judges matter, and them deciding if they want Mccain or Obama picking them. The rest is just Fundie whining about how people in the Republican Party must lick their boots, when, like blacks on the Dem Plantation, they have nowhere else to go.

2. Saint Reagan, if he survived this long in full possession of his mind, would not be the Reagan of 1983, his mind and beliefs locked in stone. Reagan always evolved with the times and necessities. Politicians obsessed with what this former FDR follower would do if vaulted from 25 years ago neglect Reagan the evolving thinker and compromiser that would likely approve of Arnold's governing philosophy as just what the times and as his people, want him to.

C. When Republicans play identity politics gimmicks like Alan Keyes and Harriet Miers, they get public rejection commensurate with the degree of such transparently obvious Republican cynicism and insincerity.

What McCain can do is avoid pandering by sticking a minority or woman less qualified than Romney or Pawlenty on the ticket, someone with no executive experience or economic expertise - but run on placing certain Latinos and women in high positions in a Mccain Administration and name some names he is interested in - Palin, Lingle, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, bipartisan Dem Ken Salazar and other Latinos from top executive spots in private industry and the military.
Blacks are a lost cause. Even without Obama EARNING a place on the opposite ticket. Running never elected to anything Condi Rice, with her Bush baggage and lack of any background in domestic policy matters, especially the economy, would be suicide. She wouldn't bring in one black vote.
***************
"When it comes to national security, John McCain is the big dog, and they are the chihuahuas," he said."
If McCain is a scarred-up junkyard dog, Romney would be.....?

The stronger, younger, smarter, better fed German Shepard that thinks he can take the junkyard dog - unaware that the scarred up old dog has lifetime knowledge of tactics of treachery and dirty fighting - and that the junkyard dog would be cheered in the fight by a crowd and media broadcasters consisting of sentimental uncritical rooters that want a last hurrah for dear old "Snagglefang".
Who got mildly chewed up and retreated, awaiting his day, so much the wiser for the fight he lost...

Posted by chris ford | March 12, 2008 3:31 PM

Adding Ambinder confuses trust with what most Presidents say about how much they trust the rival they just had to put in, or some ticket-balancer they barely know.

The first of them is that is the primary internal criterion is complete trust.

Like JFK trusted LBJ? Or FDR trusted some Pendergrast hack? Or how Reagan had such total trust in hated rival and Yale preppy, Bush Senior? The warm trust and respect that Eisenhower had in Nixon? The deep mutual trust and respect of Edwards-Kerry?

And on the flip side, was the deep actual trust Dubya had in "Uncle Dick" and his corporate interests actually a good thing for the country?

NO.

I posit that instead, what a modern President wants is someone for VP with the ability to be President Commander in Chief with the integrity to be loyal to the President and take on nearly any mission the President delegates.

Posted by chris ford | March 12, 2008 3:46 PM

Talk about making it easy to tie the Bush legacy to McCain. He doesn't particularly like her, she doesn't want the position, and frankly she's not ready for the kind of scrutiny she'd get in a presidential race.

I've seen a number of Republicans suggest they can one-up a black or female Democratic nominee with Rice. Newsflash, there are virtually no voters voting for Obama just because he's black except some modest fraction of African-Americans, and most African-Americans don't exactly like Rice.

Posted by John M. | March 12, 2008 3:54 PM

Kay Bailey is be told the job is hers if she wants it. But she wants to be Governor. One theory making the rounds is she runs as VP and if McCain runs she will Resign in the early part of 2010 to run for Governor and then Palin and Bobby replaces her.

Posted by Paul8184 | March 12, 2008 4:05 PM

Rice will never be tagged for veep.....she's
not "black enough".

Posted by interferon | March 12, 2008 4:07 PM

In what universe have those been the criteria for choosing a running mate? Two words: Dan Quayle. Or Jack Kemp. Wasn't a whole lot of trust or national-security experience in either case.

And that's assuming you were referring only to Republican tickets. If the same criteria were supposedly true for Democratic veep picks, how would you explain John Edwards, Al Gore, Geraldine Ferraro, etc. etc.?

Now, maybe those SHOULD be the criteria for a running mate. But they rarely have been in the past.

Posted by Fred App | March 12, 2008 7:20 PM

If Rice ever runs for anything, her opponent just has to make an ad showing her 9/11 testimony, where she went on about how the PDB was just a historical review of Al Qaida's activities, and then someone asks "what was the title of the PDB ?" and she says
"Bin Laden Determined To Strike USA". Oops.

No, she's really an embarrassment. Not the worst embarrassment in the Bush administration - not quite up there with AG Gonzales and Brownie and Scooter - but bad enough to be electoral poison.

Besides which, when was the last time anyone dared to choose an unmarried VP ? It may be dumb, but a spouse seems to be a checklist item for election to high office in the USA.

Posted by Richard Cownie | March 12, 2008 9:57 PM

He should pick Hillary since she believes he is qualified.

Posted by david in norcal | March 12, 2008 11:30 PM

Is Powell a better candidate than Rice, or worse?

Posted by Quietus | March 13, 2008 2:12 PM

i don't think condi rice will vote for obama, because she strikes me as a decent person.

Posted by mike | July 7, 2008 4:54 PM