Conventional wisdom now has Mitt Romney’s vice presidential
“short
list” down to four names:
Bobby Jindal,
Paul Ryan,
Rob Portman, and Tim
Pawlenty. While none of them would turn off conservatives, only
the first two would have any chance of actually exiting
conservatives and motivating an all-out effort by grassroots
activists, without which a Republican presidential candidate is
highly unlikely to win.
In that light, let’s assess the state of the field, and some
further arguments on why certain
choices would be far better than others.
First, Portman. Frankly, if he were from any
state other than the fiercely contested Ohio, he would barely be on
the list. The Obama team desperately wants again to run against the
memory of the Bush presidency/presidencies — and Portman is the
only elected official in the country who is so largely the creation
not just of one but of both Bush presidencies. That, plus his
status as Ivy-League son of Ivy-League father (to join Romney’s as
governor-wanting-to-be-president son of a governor who wanted to be
president), both of them wealthy, is hardly a good lure for the
cultural-affinity blue-collar or hard-scrabble rural voters who can
be prone to wish poxes on both houses and refuse to vote at all.
Unless Romney’s camp has internal polling showing a very
significant boost for Romney in Ohio due to a Portman selection,
its decision-makers would be well advised to stay away.
Speaking of Bushies, the latest
buzz, largely driven by Bill Kristol both in print and
(literally as I was typing the first paragraph of this column) on
Fox News, is that Condoleezza Rice has a bigger
chance than is commonly imagined. Well, Rice is a very impressive
lady, who makes a great speech, is immensely likeable, and is
culturally conservative in some very important ways. But she is
associated not just hip-to-hip with the younger Bush, but with his
most unpopular legacy of all, namely his wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Worse, she just didn’t do a good job under Bush: As
National Security Advisor, she notoriously failed to successfully
referee disputes between the departments of Defense and State; and
as Secretary of State, she often went squishy. Finally, Romney has
repeatedly promised to name a pro-lifer, but she
describes herself as “mildly pro-choice.”
Next up is the strange focus on Pawlenty. The
Romney team is said to think Pawlenty’s blue-collar background and
some of his interactions with crowds will give him credibility and
attractiveness to the slice of the electorate Pawlenty himself
dubbed “Sam’s Club Republicans.” But where is the evidence? On TV,
he comes across as a well-coifed, white-bread pol who says nothing
memorable and little that is passionate. In Minnesota, he won two
terms as governor, but both times with under 50 percent of the
vote. Plus, unlike Portman, he showed that his (supposed)
home-state popularity is utterly non-transferable: He campaigned
hard during the primary season for Romney only to see Romney badly
spanked in caucuses in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, even though Romney
had won Minnesota four years earlier. There’s a reason he bombed so
badly in his own race for president: He’s boring. If Romney were up
significantly in the polls, boring-but-safe might be a good choice.
But Romney is in a real battle. Pawlenty won’t do much to help.
Much more worthy of consideration is Arizona’s U.S. Sen.
Jon Kyl, who also earned a
mention from National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru. Kyl
speaks more impressively — with better intonation and cadence,
better specificity, and better focus — than Pawlenty. He has a
longer record as a conservative; better strengths where Romney is
less experienced (defense/foreign policy, law-and-justice); and,
importantly, does not create the heir-apparent problem of
depressing a conservative movement that wants one of its own in
either 2016 or 2020 and who might chafe at the prospect of a
lengthy Romney-Pawlenty regency.
Plus, politically he makes more sense than one would ordinarily
think. This is a guy whose roots are in Iowa and in the inland
West; he knows how to walk the right lines on Western issues. It
may be surprising, but it’s still true, that Romney can win a tie
vote in the Electoral College, and eventually the presidency,
merely by
sweeping the south, plains, and inland West (without New
Mexico), plus Alaska, without a single Rust-Belt state except for
the traditionally more conservative Indiana. In other words, Romney
could basically assign Kyl the job of heading up an
Iowa-Colorado-Nevada effort while Romney focused his efforts on the
Rust Belt and New Hampshire (and Virginia, if he’s still worried
about it). Kyl won’t hurt anywhere, but he really could help nail
down swing voters in the West and thus provide the ticket a key
firewall. (In fact, if he could help Romney nab New Mexico as well,
the firewall would create an Electoral majority, not just a
tie.)
Moving on, let’s consider Ryan and
Jindal. The arguments for both are that both would
enthuse conservative activists, and both can explain Republican
proposals on hot-button issues (health care, entitlements) in ways
that most voters can understand without being scared off. Both have
the chance also to appeal to younger voters, and neither is likely
to turn off professional women/soccer moms who often swing fairly
dramatically back and forth between parties. Both are proven
vote-getters; and Jindal adds superb crisis management to the mix
while Ryan, like his mentor Jack Kemp, knows how to reach into
non-professional ranks (union workers included) and speak the
language of “opportunity” in a way people can understand. Ryan also
presumably could help deliver Wisconsin to a GOP presidential
candidate for the first time since 1984. (Careful polling and
focus-grouping would be needed to confirm this supposition.)
The biggest drawback for both is something that in ordinary
circumstances would be a benefit, not a detriment — namely, that
they are policy wonks with a proclivity towards policy specificity.
As long as the specificity is matched by effective political sales
pitches, most campaigns would thrill at such abilities. The
question here is whether it fits in with the sort of campaign —
safe, rather vague on details, unadventurous, coldly calculated not
to provide any hard “targets” for opponents to slam — that the
Romneyites seem determined to run.
If this is the sort of thing that scares off the campaign
honchos, well, shame on them. It will mean they are playing
small-ball, in an election that calls for boldness. On the other
hand, the last thing a campaign needs is to have its strategy
mismatched with its main protagonists’ styles.
Such considerations, much as conservatives may disagree with
them, also probably help explain why nobody seems to think the
Romneyites are even considering primary-season runner-up
Rick Santorum. Yet they really, really are
wrongheaded if they haven’t at least run extensive polls on how
the Pennsylvanian would affect the ticket. Look, this campaign
should be all about winning. If Santorum can help the
ticket, it shouldn’t matter one bit whether some Romneyites bear
grudges from a rough-house primary season.
Finally, speaking of long shots,
there is one who continues to move up among veteran political
observers. Despite her newness to the national scene, New
Hampshire’s Kelly
Ayotte might be a perfect target to sucker the
Democrats. Why? Because the automatic temptation on the left will
be to attack Ayotte in very much the same way they attacked Palin,
with a fury and passion that are over the top. But Ayotte is far
more prepared for such an assault than was Palin, who despite all
her virtues was woefully unready for the scathing onslaught she
received. Ayotte already knows federal issues very well; she also
has the toughness of a former prosecutor, the executive experience
of serving as her state’s attorney general for five years, and the
respect from many of the same talking heads who bedeviled Palin and
helped set the template for coverage of her. If the left tries
smearing Ayotte the same way they smeared Palin, the result is
likely to be a backlash just as heavy from professional women swing
voters and others in the middle as it was among conservative
activists for Palin. In short, the attacks will backfire.
Ayotte also offers the advantage of hailing from not one but two
key swing states, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. She will have
been vetted longer and more deeply than Palin was, with far more
time available to plan the “roll-out” introducing her to the
American public and following up with a longer-term
strategy of capitalizing on her assets.
And as was put very
well by the blogger Brad Porter at The Crossed Pond, “Ayotte
has it all. And, most importantly, she brings it all to the table
without significant detriments or lapses to her politicality. She
can speak to kitchen table economic issues, without the baggage of
CEO-ness. She can talk to new audiences without being radically
different from them. She can add to Romney’s message in other areas
without undercutting him. She can look qualified without being old
hat. She can speak to the middle class family experience, and
offers no real purchase for arguments about being out of touch or
of a totally alien economic caste in the same way they’ll bury
Romney alive with it. She can, in other words, add to the campaign,
with no significant subtracting.”
So, I’ll be willing to bet that the list is down to these eight:
Jindal, Ryan, Portman, Pawlenty, Santorum, Kyl, Rice, and Ayotte.
If I were running the campaign, I’d pick Jindal or Kyl (for reasons
explained here),
with Ryan offering almost as good an option. (This is, of course,
assuming that detailed, multiple polls and focus groups don’t
indicate that one particular candidate offers tremendous,
game-changing benefits. In that case, the data should rule as long
as the private vetting doesn’t find jokers in the deck.) In the
end, I don’t think Kyl, Santorum, Rice, or Pawlenty will prove
attractive enough to the Romney team — and I’m betting
(figuratively) that Romney ultimately will find himself agonizing
between either Portman (indicating Ohio’s importance),
Jindal, or Ryan, on one hand, and Ayotte on the other. Yes, Ayotte
will continue moving up, and will make it to the very final cut.
And if she’s chosen, she is likely to prove herself a champ.
