Don't They Listen?

The pundits and political experts hear Barack Obama talking about changing Washington and ending the old politics, and say how inspirational he is. And then they demand that he act according to the old politics.

It's starting again on the questions of Hillary Clinton leaving the race, and the related question of who Obama will choose for vice president. I happen to believe that on both of these topics, the conventional wisdom will once again be wrong.

For example, there's an article by Dan Conley in Salon that Teagan Goddard's Political Wire calls a "must read," which suggests the kind of deal that Hillary might get in exchange for her support. His major suggestion is money--a bunch of Obama cash to retire her campaign debt.

There were similar discussions during the endless wait for the Indiana primary finish Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Carl Bernstein said that a couple of Hillary staffers told him she wants the vice-presidential nomination.

I'm pretty skeptical on both specifics. First, the money. If the Obama campaign didn't want to pay Democratic Party people in the wards of Philadelphia to get out the vote, why would they spend their contributors' money on extortion for the Clintons?

Then the vice-president. There's a lot of misinformation about the process going around. The way presidential candidates choose vice-presidential candidates these days isn't the way the Kennedys picked Lyndon Johnson.
There's an elaborate and collaborative process of getting information--and specifically, of vetting. That process is only beginning in the Obama campaign, according to somebody's reporting the other night--it may have been Howard Fineman. In any case, no decision will be made for weeks or months. And in the end, only one person will make it: Barack Obama.

Hillary may or may not be on the initial list. If she is, the campaign will try to discover just what the Republicans will use on her to discredit the ticket. Then they will weigh carefully what she brings to the ticket versus how she weakens it. They will balance her appeal and power within the party against Billary's negative campaigning and above all, her real belief in the old politics, and her identification with the old politics in the mind of voters---especially Obama voters. And they will present all of this information and these views and evaluations to Barack Obama.

And then Obama will decide, on these and other considerations: can he work with her (and Bill)? Will they undermine him in the White House? Will she even be able to see transforming government in the way that he does? I doubt it. But it's his call.

My guess is that he will look most favorably on someone younger than Clinton, someone from his generation. This worked for Bill Clinton and Al Gore--it was a powerful visual and political message in 1992. I do think he'll consider women first.

The other conventional wisdom is that he'll have to pick someone who supported Hillary. (I saw Ed Rendell's name mentioned--I don't think there's a chance of that.) But Obama isn't going to make the conventional choice: he isn't going to choose on the basis of geographical balance, molifying Clinton or her supporters, going for a military/foreign policy figure, or a governor. If the person who interests him the most has any or all of those particular advantages, those will be ancilliary reasons, or just plain bonuses.

He's going to choose someone who identifies with his brand of new politics--someone who also represents the kind of change that was the moral center and the centerpiece of his primary campaign, and will be of his general election campaign.

And the factors that none of us can measure are his judgment of someone's fitness to be President--his kind of President--and of how they relate personally.
So while Gov. Kathleen Sibelius is often mentioned, she has to go through a vetting process (her son has apparently made some waves--how serious is that?) and we have no idea how they get along. On the other hand, Obama is said to be friends with Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. (And she would break another barrier, though it's never mentioned: there has never been an Italian-American in the White House.)

And while Senator Jim Webb is seldom mentioned, he is Obama's generation, and though he has remained neutral so far, he may be an Obama kind of new politician. I don't know. The point is, no one does. It's a fun game but let's also be realistic. Obama is going to decide, and if he is true to his campaign so far, it isn't going to be a choice made chiefly by the old criteria. Hillary is not going to dictate the v.p. choice. If you believe that, you haven't been listening.

Plus, the premise of all this is questionable, and may become more questionable very soon. Because the party may force Hillary out, before she has to be bribed out. Consider this quote from another story in Salon:

And perhaps most dangerous for Clinton now is the fact that a number of superdelegates -- whom she needs to win over in large numbers to have any chance to emerge the victor -- are losing patience. West Virginia Democratic Party chairman Nick Casey told Salon in a phone interview Wednesday that he wouldn't be surprised if Clinton pulled the plug on her campaign before Tuesday.

Did you get that? The Chairman of the party in West Virginia, where the next primary is held, and where Clinton is supposed to have solid support, suggests that she'll drop out before that primary in his state. And that was only one of the examples.

It's pretty likely now that by as early as May 20 and as late as June 5, Barack Obama will be the presumptive nominee by virtue of having obtained the necessary number of delegates.

How important is Hillary's support in the general election? I don't think that's as obvious as it's being treated. Part of the drama in this campaign has been the loosening grip of the Clintons on the Democratic party, and the resentments that have surfaced. Hillary has strong appeal to constituencies of voters, but in the end, she is part of the old politics that Obama is campaigning against. It is more to her political advantage to be seen as supporting the party ticket, I believe, than it is for Obama to muddy the image of the kind of politics he wants to bring to Washington, by being seen to give in to her demands.

Yes, the party needs to be unified. But the leader of the party sets the tone and the conditions. And that's not Hillary Clinton. The leader is Barack Obama.