The buzz this week is all about who Sen. Obama will chose as his Vice Presidential nominee. I have been talking with friends and the question keeps coming up, “How important is the pick?” The answer - it is one of those choices in life you can only “screw up”; getting it right often has little to no impact on the candidate’s chances of winning the White House. Additionally, trying to guess who the President is going to choose - is like trying to predict where lighting is going to strike - it’s nearly impossible.

The Vice President pick is the Presidential candidate’s first political appointment. It is often the first “decision” the Presidential candidate makes of any consequence. Because of those facts, the choice of who is the VP is placed under significant scrutiny by the media and the electorate. I remember when Quayle was nominated, people went “Who?” Bush’s credibility took a hit, because, the appointment was understood by pundits and partisans alike that Quayle’s choice was a “bolt out of the blue,” of a guy who wasn’t really qualified to be President if the situation ever arose. Events such as the famous “Potatoe” incident didn’t exactly inspire confidence in Mr. Quayle after taking office.

And we all remember Admiral Stockdale’s “Who am I? Why am I here?” Not that Perot ever had a real chance of being elected - but his choice for VP in Admiral Stockdale was a disaster because of the perception that Stockdale was an incompetent bumbling moron.

Perceptions about the VP are almost more important than the reality. The idea is that the Vice Presidential pick will help the Presidential candidate win the general election - so the choice is often based on an electoral calculus. A northerner should pick a southerner - and vice-versa. A west coast candidate needs an east-coast candidate. The funny thing about these “balances” is - it rarely works out that way in the general election. For example, Edwards did absolutely nothing for Kerry. Bush did very little for Reagan. Cheney did absolutely nothing for Bush. Mondale did nothing for Carter. Perhaps the only situation where the VP calculus in terms of electoral math made sense was Kennedy’s choice of Johnson - Johnson did deliver Texas and probably a few votes to boot!

Lately the trend is to balance positions. I don’t know how important that really is in terms of picking the VP. I don’t think the voters are so retarded as to be unable to understand that the Vice President has few legal responsibilities and is the second fiddle on the ticket. Thus, one has to wonder if Kemp’s pro-business, pragmatic views, really kept Republicans in line with Dole as the nominee. Did people vote for Kerry because Edwards was the guy on the ticket in the number two spot? Probably not.

Again - the only place where this calculus could actually work out would be if Obama chose Hillary. The Hillary voting block seems quite cohesive. Having her as the #2 could go along way to getting those people to the polls. There is considerable reason to believe a large number of the Hillary supporters are going to go to McCain if Obama ultimately doesn’t pick Hillary. How real that threat is remains to be seen.

Finally, another theory is that President’s pick people whom compliment their weaknesses. The thrust of Obama picking Biden is the alleged foreign policy gap. The choice for Gov. Tim Kaine is looking for someone with domestic policy experience (makes me wonder what Obama’s experience is then if he’s weak on both foreign and domestic policy)? This strategy seems to me to be an interesting pundit factor - but I don’t think it factors in much for the choice of the candidate nor the electorate. Rarely do voters view the President/Vice President as a “team” of “co-equals.” Perhaps as a result of Vice President Cheney, people are starting to appreciate the power that can be wielded by a VP with close presidential ties and an effective staff for working Capitol Hill, however, few VP picks will match Cheney’s deft in handling these issues.

It was actually Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale turned the vice presidency around and made it something where there was some “teeth” to it. Mondale had offices and staffers in the West Wing, regular one-on-one meetings with the president, and access to top appointees. Their example has been followed since.

And presidential nominees have not waited until the very last minute at the convention to pick their nominees since Ronald Reagan did in 1980.  Which leads me to believe, Obama is doing this purposefully to avoid two problems - a mounting attack against whomever is chosen (the “Swift Boat” problem). Second, and perhaps more shallowly, avoiding the “Phelps” problem - where everyone is galvanized by the Olympics. Nevertheless, if one was evaluating Obama’s ability to be decisive - hard to justify why he waited to so long.

I think it is nearly impossible to predict, unless one is privy to the conversations, the logic of how the Vice Presidential candidate is chosen. For example, no one could have predicted, from the outside, the choice of George H.W. Bush’s nomination of Sen. Dan Quayle. Moreover, consider situations like Ford choosing Rockefeller, over Bush or Reagan. In such a case, all three choices made logical sense - but picking any one over the others relies entirely on understanding (and being privy to) the internal calculus of the campaign and how the Presidential candidate understands the dynamics of the election, the dynamics of his campaign, and the belief that the Vice President will reach out to some constituency or supplant some weakness. Moreover, one has to understand the internal party calculus at play. Again, using Ford as an example, Ford’s political adviser Melvin Laird believes Rockefeller is the only Republican who can deliver enough political punch to help Ford win the 1976 presidential election. Ford’s first choice, Senator Barry Goldwater, refuses consideration, saying that he is too old. When asked who he would recommend, Goldwater names George H.W. Bush. Bush and his supporters mount a strong internal campaign for the job. Rockefeller is much more ambivalent about his possible selection; he has presidential ambitions of his own, but at age 66 knows that if he ever intends to run for the White House, his time is at hand. The idea of spending four years as Ford’s vice president does not necessarily appeal to him. Republican party conservatives, lead at the time by Senator Jesse Helms, attack Rockefeller at every opportunity. However, Ford’s chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, works behind the scenes to promote Rockefeller’s nomination over Bush’s within the RNC. Rumsfeld’s support of Rockefeller is not along ideological lines, instead he feels Ford will have a better shot at the 1980 presidential nomination with Rockefeller as vice president than he will with Bush. Ultimately, Rumsfeld prevails in bolstering Rockefeller, and Rockefeller agrees to be the Vice President.

In short - the Byzantine process that results in a Vice President pick - is about as complicated as trying to determine how a raindrop will fall down a pane of glass. It is possible to make such calculations, but, the chances of navigating it successfully is relatively low. The path is obvious only after it has played its course. So I don’t get all that excited about trying to see into the future and guess who Senator Obama or McCain will pick as their Vice President. Bottom line - it’s based on factors I can’t necessarily see or predict.

Who wants to be Vice President anyways? Depends on who you ask. For example, John Nance Garner spent his entire adult life working his way up to Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and then gave it up to become Vice President. He later said it was the “worst damn fool mistake I ever made.” Being “second fiddle” is a tough job for some people. It definitely was for “Cactus Jack” Garner.

The problem was that everyone knew vice presidents had little to do. Presiding over the Senate is a clerk’s job, and opportunities to break ties there seldom arise. As late as the 1950s, vice presidents did business from an office in the Capitol and had little occasion to visit the White House. When Harry Truman was summoned there on April 12, 1945, and told of Franklin Roosevelt’s death, he did not know that the president was out of the city; he had met with him just twice in his eighty-two days as vice president. After Truman’s first cabinet meeting, Secretary of War Henry Stimson took him aside and told him the government was developing a weapon of enormous power. This was the first time Truman had heard about the atomic bomb.

Truman’s unpreparedness may have prompted some later presidents to give vice presidents useful things to do. Dwight Eisenhower sent Richard Nixon on important foreign trips. John Kennedy gave Lyndon Johnson responsibility for the space program. Gerald Ford gave Rockefeller some assignments, then dropped him from the ticket.

In short - being the VP is a job that, as Cactus Jack said, “is not worth a bucket of warm piss.” Well, he wasn’t called “Cactus Jack” for nothing….

And as for the President’s choice of VP - unless he really screws it up… it rarely matters.

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