Letter From America
Barack, please pick Hillary
CONVENTIONAL wisdom has it that Barack Obama should not pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate, unless he is trailing so badly in the polls that without Hillary he cannot win.
This may be conventional thinking, but there is not much wisdom in it. If it is clear that Obama picked Hillary only because he could not win the women and working class white votes without her, who will be in the catbird seat? You pick your VP because you want to, not because you have to. If Hillary is the reason Barack wins the general election, then his tenure will become a co-presidency.
The current thinking is that Barack will pick an experienced (read older) white male. The names most mentioned are Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (for his knowledge of foreign affairs), former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn (for his armed services credentials) and Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana (a former Hillary supporter who will not upstage Obama).
If Joe Biden is picked, the Republicans will remind voters that during his 1988 presidential campaign, one of Biden's speeches ("why am I the first person from my family to go to college?") was plagiarised from one of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock's speeches!
If Sam Nunn is picked, John McCain's age disadvantage will be somewhat neutralised. Nunn will be 70 in September. Surely, there must be better criteria for choosing a VP candidate than picking someone who is too boring to threaten the president, such as Evan Bayh!
Critics say that if Hillary is picked as VP, there will be three presidents in the White House -- Hillary and Bill being the other two. They may have a point as far as Bill Clinton is concerned.
Hillary campaign insiders privately admit that Bill hurt his wife's campaign, which had decided to write off the South Carolina primary. But Bill insisted that she compete. It was in South Carolina that Bill played the race card and compared Obama to Jesse Jackson to a chorus of angry protests from Obama supporters. Bill's gaffes also hurt Hillary in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
It was clear that Bill was a loose cannon who could not be controlled. After all, Bill Clinton, one of the most brilliant politicians of the twentieth century, was a two-term president -- the first Democrat elected to multiple terms in office since Franklin D. Roosevelt. As such, he commanded respect; he did not like to be told what to do.
In an interview before Super Tuesday, February 5, Barack Obama praised Ronald Reagan as a transformational president. Bill Clinton was irked because Obama never praised him by name.
One could argue that it was difficult for Obama to praise Bill Clinton without also indirectly praising his rival, Hillary Clinton, because Hillary claimed to have been intimately involved in Bill Clinton's White House, especially in areas such as healthcare, the peace processes in Northern Ireland and Bosnia.
Although he promised Obama his full support, Bill Clinton is yet to make a public appearance with Barack Obama. Bill honestly believes that Hillary is a better candidate and should have won the nomination. He feels that Obama is praising his peace and prosperity presidency and giving him respect now because Obama needs his help to get elected president.
Some women are also being mentioned as Obama's running mate: Obama supporters Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. It will be strange indeed if a female VP candidate is picked whose name is not Hillary Clinton.
After defeating the late prime minister Ted Heath for party chairman in the first round in 1975, Margaret Thatcher picked the person who finished second to her in the second round, Willie Whitelaw, as the deputy leader of the Conservative Party and, four years later, the deputy prime minister.
After a bitter primary fight in 1960, John F. Kennedy offered the VP slot to Lyndon Johnson, who surprisingly accepted. Although George H. W. Bush had called Ronald Reagan's economic policies "voodoo economics" during the 1980 campaign, Reagan picked Bush, who had finished second in the primaries, as his VP. The framers of the constitution were of the opinion that the candidate finishing second in the primary should be the VP.
Hillary Clinton not only finished second in the Democratic primary this year, the contest was a virtual tie. After finding her voice during the middle of the campaign, Hillary won more primaries during the second half of the contest than Obama did.
With Hillary on the ticket, Obama will clinch the support of the women and many working class white voters. As Obama limped to nomination victory, one could argue that Hillary had earned the right to be the vice-president because of her strong and close finish.
Obama has an opportunity to make history twice over. If he were to choose Hillary as his VP, America will cross two hurdles simultaneously -- the nation will have its first African-American president and its first woman vice-president.
Sure, there will be questions about vetting Hillary and, by extension, Bill Clinton, whose worldwide monetary transactions for the Clinton library could reveal embarrassing facts, a la revelations of Geraldine Ferraro's husband's shady dealings when she was picked for VP by Walter Mondale in 1984. But Bill will be twice removed from Obama and will do less harm.
Some worry whether Obama will be able to stand up to the two Clintons. If Obama lacks such fortitude to take on the Clintons, he has no business running for president.
Although national polls show Barack Obama leading John McCain by 3 to 7 points, statewide polls are more revealing. Except for Florida, Obama leads McCain in all swing states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. What is more shocking for the Republicans, Obama is ahead of McCain in traditional Republican strongholds such as Virginia, North Carolina, Idaho and Missouri.
It appears that Barack Obama does not need Hillary Clinton to win the US presidency. That is why he should pick her to be his vice-president.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments