It's a tricky business, picking a vice presidential candidate, and not merely because it's the first — and very public — decision a candidate will make after they receive their party's nomination. "Should I choose someone who provides regional balance?" "Would a woman make the most electoral sense?" "Maybe I need someone who could tip an important swing state." "But this other guy could help heal a rift in the party's coalition..."
I don't pretend to know who Donald Trump will pick this summer, in the near-certainty he wins the nomination again. But I do know one person he ought to rule out right now, assuming he hasn't already.
One of the most substantial veep picks of all time was Harry Truman in 1944 — and FDR didn't even make the decision. Top party officials knew that FDR was dying — a shame they couldn't be bothered to share that tidbit with voters — and did NOT want the commie-loving sitting vice president, Henry Wallace, to take power when FDR bought the ranch. Roosevelt wanted James F. Byrnes, but party insiders conspired to make the nominating convention settle on Truman.
That worked out much better than Wallace would have, believe me. Instead of ordering the first atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan, he probably would have gifted them to Stalin.
Some picks seemed weird at first, like in 1992 when young, moderate Southerner Bill Clinton picked another young (then), moderate Southerner, Al Gore. But Clinton — who is probably the most gifted retail politician of his generation, no matter what you think of his craptaculent administration — made a savvy pick in Gore. He signaled that his new DLC Democrats weren't too old, too liberal, or too Northeast. Together, they cracked the GOP's "solid south" and handily won two elections. Much to my chagrin.
Eight years ago (!!!), the notoriously randy* Donald Trump picked the seriously monogamous and devoutly Christian Mike Pence. The two men were an even odder couple than Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, and it isn't like Pence's home state of Indiana was going to go for Hillary Clinton. But Pence provided much-needed CYA with the GOP's vital evangelical voters. Since then, they've stuck with Trump, if you'll allow me to be pointed about it, in exactly the way that Pence didn't.
(*I mean no insult. It's just a fact that Trump spent the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s with his dating antics and various divorces gracing the front page of every tabloid in America — often at his own insistence.)
Pence has less chance of getting tapped again by Trump for another run in 2024 than I have of being picked as your drunk nephew's AA sponsor. There's certainly no mystery there.
So who is the guy I really believe Trump shouldn't choose?
It's the guy who seems to be jockeying hardest for the job, Vivek Ramaswamy.
There are things to like about Ramaswamy, and I wrote on this page just yesterday that I believe he deserves a plum job in a Re-Trump White House. The problem with Vivek is that he comes off as a little too much like Trump, himself. Trump has always struggled to connect with swing voters, with an overall approval rating that rarely reaches the high 40s. A little Trump is just too much for certain voters we need to win in November, and Ramaswamy adds more of the same.
I mean no insult to Ramaswamy, either. I'm sure he has a future in the GOP if he wants one. I just don't see what voters he brings to the GOP ticket that Trump doesn't already bring. If my own, informal polling is any indicator, Ramaswamy might even turn off a number of Republican women who are only glumly committed to supporting Trump. "Ramaswamy is the creep in the bar who won't stop sending you drinks," one put it to me.
To cover his XX flank, Trump might be smart to pick a more traditional-seeming Republican woman — provided, of course, that her name doesn't rhyme with Mickie Bailey.
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