Running Mate Chit Chat

Calpundit has a thoughtful post about whether or not there is any mutual desire between the two principals for a Kerry-Edwards ticket. He surmises that Edwards is not likely to be on the ticket and makes a number of good points along the way. However, I've been thinking about one point that Kevin didn't mention. Kerry won't choose Edwards because the younger John would outshine Kerry.

The last thing Kerry wants or needs is to be standing next to his veep nominee only to have the attention focused on the sunnier, younger and more handsome Edwards. I don't mean to imply that aesthetics will or should drive the selection, but Kerry must recognize that Edwards bests him in oratorical skill and general demeanor. The primary results notwithstanding, Edwards tends to wear better than Kerry over time. Kerry can't afford to have people looking wistfully down ticket.

Looking at recent history I'm hard pressed to identify any campaigns where the bottom of the ticket was significantly more dynamic than the top of the ticket. Cheney, Lieberman, Gore, Quayle, Bentsen, Bush, Mondale, Dole. None of these candidates was giving their party's standard bearer heavy competition in the pizzazz department. Kemp and Ferraro offer the most compelling countervailing evidence. But for one reason or another neither precedent is entirely congruent with the situation Kerry would face were he to install Edwards at his side.

Kemp certainly offered much more dynamism and energy than did Dole. But Kemp, at the end of his carrer, really wasn't on the kind of upward trajectory in the Republican party in the way that Edwards is within the Democratic party.

Since very few people could have been less vibrant than Mondale, he was pretty much bound to goose the pizzazz meter whomever he selected. If Reagan's popularity hadn't already sealed Mondale's fate, his choice of a articulate, moderately dynamic woman certainly didn't help keep the public's attention riveted on the top of the ticket. But Ferraro, unlike Edwards, was thrust into the national limelight from relative obscurity. And the glare of national attention ultimately shone too intensely revealing her husband's tax fraud and her son's drug use. It's unlikely that Edwards, after having already run a national campaign for nearly two years, would similarly melt under the national spotlight.

In any case, whether or not you believe Kemp and Ferraro outshone their running mates, the fact is they both lost. The losses resulted from the lackluster performances at the tops of the tickets, to be sure. But to the extent that Kemp and Ferraro highlighted the inadequacies of their running mates whatever dynamism they might have had can't have helped their cause.

So I don't know whether Kerry will go for geographic balance, experiential balance, some kind of "statement" or none of the above. But I have a hard time seeing him choosing someone who quite easily could upstage him. It will be hard for Kerry to make the case that he's the best person for the job if there's any lingering question whether he's even the best person on the ticket.

n.b. In a somewhat ironic juxtaposition, there is a "Draft Kerry-Edwards" blog-ad currently running right next to the Calpundit post.

Update: Matthew Yglesias shares his skepticism about Edwards. In Matthew's comments someone even picks up the point that, if chosen, Edwards would outshine Kerry