Over at our sister site Townhall, Kurt Schlichter laid out a case for why Donald Trump should pick Nikki Haley as his running mate, assuming he wins the GOP presidential nomination this year. This recommendation isn’t out of love for Nikki Haley — not in the least. He argues that Haley would not only expand Trump’s base but would also bring in establishment donors and suburban women voters.
Sure, when it comes to policy, there are concerns about Haley, but what influence do vice presidents actually have on presidents? Arguably, very little. Schlichter argues that a Trump-Haley ticket would do better than any other potential GOP ticket with Trump at the top. Perhaps he has a point. Donald Trump, however, disagrees.
“If you study the history of presidential runs, a vice president has never made a difference — which is surprising,” Trump told Breitbart in an exclusive interview. “It’s a one-night story, and then they’re back to a regular evening. They’re voting for the president. They’re not voting for the vice president. There has, not that I can think of, never been a vice president that’s made much of a difference in terms of nomination and in terms of even winning the election.”
Frankly, I think both Schlichter and Trump have good points, and the reality is somewhere in between.
Let’s go back to 2008 when Republican primary voters chose John McCain as their nominee. He was younger in 2008 than Joe Biden was in 2020, yet his age was constantly an issue in the campaign. He chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, which most certainly helped him with conservative voters but may have hurt him with other voters concerned that her inexperience with foreign affairs was a liability (even though it was no less than Barack Obama’s was, frankly).
The media harped on the idea that it was bad for someone with so little experience to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. So in the end, choosing Palin helped in some ways and hurt in others, even if the attacks on Palin were patently unfair.
Just as McCain needed someone to balance his ticket, so did Obama. He was barely in the Senate before he decided one day to run for the presidency. It’s hard to imagine someone less qualified for the nation’s top job. He knew that this was a problem for him, so he chose the oldest white guy with a reputation for experience he could find to serve as his running mate: Joe Biden. Now, Obama didn't put Biden on the ticket to help get votes as much as to make it easier for people to vote for a newbie like Obama.
Related: Can Nikki Haley Afford To Keep Making Such Dumb Mistakes?
Donald Trump did the same thing when he ran in 2016. He needed someone on the inside and chose Mike Pence, a six-term congressman turned governor of Indiana. Pence offered the ticket legislative and executive experience in the public sector. He also brought strong conservative values, which most certainly made it easier for evangelicals to support Trump.
And then there’s Biden, the oldest old guy and the whitest white male the Democratic Party had to offer in 2020. He sold himself on his electability, but he’s about as exciting as watching water evaporate in a glass. Biden knew as well as anyone that his base wasn’t going to turn out for a ticket of old white men, so he chose a younger minority woman as his running mate.
In all these cases, there’s a pattern of ticket balancing, whether it's based on geography, demographics, ideology, experience, or countless other factors, and let’s not pretend that to some degree, no matter how small, it matters. I wasn’t exactly on the Trump Train in 2016, but Pence’s inclusion on the ticket helped me feel better about voting for Trump. In 2008, I was voting more for Palin than McCain. In 2024, as Biden’s age and cognitive problems are even worse, Kamala Harris has become an even bigger liability for him than Palin was for McCain.
So yes, it matters who your running mate is, even just a little bit. If he's the nominee, Trump had better make a good choice.
