29 Tuesday Aug 2006
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Do you need to know who a party’s presidential nominee will be before you can say anything about who its nominee for vice president will be? Yes and no. That’s because far from being an expression of personal choice on the part of the nominee, the considerations involved in selecting a veep tend not to change over time.
22 Tuesday Aug 2006
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Some of the key considerations in selecting a vice presidential running mate, as followers of our summer seminar in this space know, are part unity, ticket balancing, electoral advantage and plausibility as an eventual successor to the Oval Office. Most all of those tapped for veep meet one or more of these criteria.
15 Tuesday Aug 2006
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Nobody, as we discussed here last week, ever decreased his chance of getting elected president by running for vice president. (Well, maybe Dan Quayle, whom George H.W. Bush did the huge disservice of selecting for the veep slot before Mr. Quayle was ready for the spotlight.) But what kind of criteria should a presidential nominee and those in his inner circle of advisors adopt in picking a veep? It seems to me that there are four main considerations (which can overlap, of course).
08 Tuesday Aug 2006
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
There are two kinds of presidential candidates: those who actually aspire to the nation’s highest office and those who are running to elevate their profile or push an ideological agenda. As examples of the latter on the Republican side, we have televangelist Pat Robertson in 1988 and America-first conservative commentator Pat Buchanan in 1992 (when he demonstrated incumbent president George H.W. Bush’s vulnerability with a surprisingly strong showing in New Hampshire before fading). On the Democratic side, for example, there was civil rights activist Al Sharpton in 2004.
01 Tuesday Aug 2006
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The 2008 presidential election is a wide-open contest, and Democrats, as we saw here last week, have responded with a broad field. What could have been an early consensus in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton is so far anything but, as Democrats fight over how they want to position themselves. The Republican field, by contrast, seems surprisingly underpopulated, again given the givens.
Tod Lindberg 