The NY Times reports that John McCain is planning to meet
with three potential running mates at his Arizona ranch this
weekend: Charlie Crist, Bobby Jindal, and Mitt Romney. None of them
would be wise choices for VP. Let me approach this one at a
time.
Clearly, McCain owes a favor to Crist, who no doubt helped put
him over the top in the crucial Florida primary, so this very well
could be who McCain ends up choosing. The problem is he isn't
particularly liked by conservatives. I also think McCain should be
able to win the Sunshine State without him on the ticket.
Jindal would, without a doubt, add instant conservative appeal
to his ticket, as well as youth, and a brilliant mastery of policy.
But the problem is that at 36, he's still quite inexperienced, and
thus picking him to be a heartbeat away from the presidency will
undercut the central argument McCain is making against Obama. And I
know this is a factor more for the future of conservative politics
in general than for McCain specifically, but after years of the
Bush administration, conservatives are in desperate need of a
strong story of successul governance. In eight years, Jindal will
still be young, but he could have a Giuliani-type turnaround story
in Lousiana--only without the personal bagage or problems with
social conservatives. Nominating him as VP would be like when a
baseball team trades away its top pitiching prospect midseason in
hopes of winning now.
The same commentators who spent all of last year trying, without
success, to convince the grassroots that Romney was the candidate
for conservatives, are now arguing that McCain can instantly win
over conservatives by picking Romney. That is ludicrous. If Romney
had truly closed the deal with conservatives, he would have
captured the nomination. Instead, he was chased out of South
Carolina after spending millions there running ads and building an
organization, and finished a distant fourth. He couldn't
consolidate conservatives in Florida after Fred Thompson dropped
out of the race, even as talk radio and conservative pundits
rallied around him. And then he got crushed on Super Tuesday.
Also, good luck running a "Straight Talk" campaign with Romney
on the ticket. On top of the fact that he wouldn't win over
conservatives, Romney would be an absolute albatross on nationally,
because in the process of twisting himself in a pretzel on issue
after issue in the primaries, the general public came to see him as
a phony. In the most recent Gallup poll to ask about Romney, around
the time he dropped out of the race in February, he came away with
a net
unfavorable rating of 12 points. And having run the most
negative campaign of any Republican, the Democrats can spend all
fall running ads of Romney attacking McCain, especially on
economics. Furthermore, Romney's actual strengths as an organizer
and executive will not be very relevant in the number two slot.
topics:
Trade, John McCain, Economics
