Hillary for VP???

West Coast Opinionator — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:50:46 EDT

I hope this post proves utterly irrelevant. Still, a friend's recent suggestion to me that Barack could pick Hillary for his VP nominee wants me to put objections to this idea on record and to share them with others.

To start with, however, I see arguments for Barack picking Hillary. She brings lots of supporters to the table. She would aggressively and effectively counter the anti-Obama attacks by McCain and the right wing--she would prove very useful in this regard, because those attacks are only going to get more intense as the campaign grinds on. And she brings other attributes to bear as a candidate and potential president.

But the arguments against Hillary have never mainly centered on doubting her attributes, but rather on her negatives. So many people hate her, and not just folks on the right. The way she ran her primary campaign--her calling McCain better suited to be Commander in Chief than Obama, her tremendous exaggerations about her qualifications and experience, her inability to reign in Bill, etc., etc.--alienated lots of folks in the center and on the left. I was briefly for Hillary at one point after Edwards dropped out, but both Obama's appeal and her negativity drove me toward Barack. My wife now hates her so much--again, a product of how Hillary ran her campaign--that she claims she won't even vote if Obama picks her. We're not exactly a scientific sample, but lots of folks came to despise her in ways that will hurt Obama if he picks her. And lots of independents disliked her to begin with.

Such a selection would come on top of Obama raising doubts in some supporters' minds by virtue of his tacking toward the center on a bunch of issues. I think his moving in that direction makes perfect political sense (though I still have problems with the FISA shift), and on some issues it even confirms his claim about his ability to find common ground. But Hillary would be the straw--no, make that the tree--that broke the camel's back. How can Barack be the candidate of change if he brings the ultimate insider onto his ticket? The McCain and right-wing ads would practically write themselves. T

his also would have a concrete impact on the big "enthusiasm gap" that Obama holds over McCain, in that a much higher percentage of Barack's backers are very strongly for him. Yes, some Hillary supporters might come on board, but many Obama enthusiasts would stop giving donations, volunteering, or trying to persuade undecided voters to come on board. Some might even migrate to Nader or the Greens, or (like my wife) simply not vote at all. Plus Hillary would be exactly the tonic McCain needs to rally the right and tip many independents his way. McCain's only hope is to make the campaign about Obama's negatives. For Barack to pick Hillary would only feed into that.

There's the possibility--no, make that the certainty--that Bill's financial dealings (his foundation, his library, his consulting, perhaps even whose paid for some of his speeches) make his inevitable salience for a Barack-Hillary ticket highly problematic. Some of those dealings have already been documented by sources such as the NY Times. More would surely come to light. There's also the possibility--no, make that the near certainty, as suggested in a Vanity Fair article--that Bill's private life has been less than stellar since he left office. Yet another near certainty is that he's become more of a liability than an asset on the campaign trail.

What's more, unless Obama's folks have done a very good, very secretive job of vetting Hillary herself, there may yet be more damaging information to come out about her despite the assumption that her time in public life has aired all her dirty laundry.

Finally, McCain has sought to portray Obama as a celebrity, elitist, without substance, soft. It would effectively feed into McCain's anti-Barack meme for Obama to pick a woman who battered him during the primary campaign. And there's the danger that a black-female ticket would simply be seen as too politically correct for folks already uneasy about a black presidential candidate, period. Don't get me wrong--I abhor such reasoning; the appeal of this stuff to some folks boils down to sexist or racist garbage. None of this is fair, but neither was the swift-boating of Kerry or the Republican charges that Gore had problems with telling the truth.

OK. Having said this I'll resume hoping and assuming that Barack selects someone else for VP.