Biden’s choice of running mate will be crucial
The biggest decision a presidential nominee can make, say the sages, is the selection of a vice-presidential running mate. This year it has a singular significance.
You might argue that it’s always important in a system in which the No. 2 may become No. 1. Of 45 presidents, 14 began as vice-president.
But presidential nominees don’t assume they’re going to die in office. When William Mckinley chose Theodore Roosevelt to run with him in 1900, he wasn’t thinking at his inauguration the following March that he would be assassinated in September. Nor was Roosevelt, who became his running mate reluctantly.
But Roosevelt was a great president. He was a pioneering conservationist and a trustbusting progressive. Whatever his imperialism and jingoism, he belongs on Mount Rushmore.
It raises the question: If Abraham Lincoln knew he would be shot in 1865, would he have picked Andrew Johnson, a racist who was subsequently impeached and escaped removal by one vote?
Would JFK have chosen Lyndon Johnson? No one could understand why LBJ, the swaggering Senate Majority Leader, took the job, until he allowed privately that he had checked the odds; by 1960, seven vice-presidents had ascended to the Oval Office on the death of the president.
Would Franklin Roosevelt have chosen Harry Truman? FDR was dying of congestive heart failure in the summer of 1944. His indifference was political malpractice. He never told Truman about the atomic bomb.
Today the vice-presidency itself isn’t “the pitcher of warm spit” that John Nance Garner famously called it. Al Gore and Joe Biden were strong vice-presidents. Dick Cheney was the strongest.
While Mike Pence is a lawn ornament, he’s an exception in an office of growing authority. Joe Biden, if he becomes president, will trust, consult and delegate power to his VP, seeking her advice and ideas.
Moreover, Biden brings his own challenges. One is that he will be 78 when he takes office in January, which would make him the oldest elected president in history. Another is that he is an old 78.
Biden is less sharp. He mangles syntax. He forgets. Trump will exploit this. If Biden is unsteady in three national debates in the fall — his campaign refuses Trump’s demand for a fourth — Trump will mercilessly exploit Biden’s fitness for the job.
Biden can get through the campaign, but he will need help prosecuting the case against Trump, the first impeached president to seek re-election. This is his running mate’s job.
Biden and his circle know that the election isn’t about him; the Democrats could run a cheese sandwich. As they said of FDR, he just has to get to November.
They also know it’s unlikely Biden will run for a second term. Moreover, there’s a chance he will not finish his first term. That is why he talks of being “a transitional president.”
This is not a prediction but an actuarial reality in a country where the average lifespan for a man is around 79. It is not a reflection of Biden’s values, experience or character.
All this — the power of the vice-presidency, Biden’s uncertain health, the threat of re-electing an impeached Trump — will inform Biden’s choice of VP.
Chances are the vice-president — whom we know will be a woman — will succeed the president in 2025, after an election, or, more darkly, after his death or incapacity.
This means Biden has to strike an exquisite balance between the political — finding the right mix of race, sex, age, ideology and geography to win the election — and the right chemistry, competence, intelligence and experience to govern the country.
Biden has time; with the Democratic (virtual) convention expected to open Aug. 17 rather than in July, he can delay his decision into midsummer. By then, he will know with greater precision where he stands in the polls.
If the election is tight, he may make a hard political choice, as Kennedy picked LBJ to win Texas. If he is comfortably ahead, he will favour governing. Either way, the vice-presidency has never mattered as much.