Gore for VP...?

Rob Kuttner at TAPPED explores the idea of Gore as Obama’s Vice Presidential nominee. Wouldn’t that be something?

The fact that former Virginia governor Mark Warner is delivering the keynote speech at the Democratic Convention is being taken as a sign that Kaine (also a former governor of Virgina) is out of the running. Apart from the fact that Evan Bayh is about as unexciting a candidate as one can imagine, he’d almost certainly end up being replaced in the Senate by a Republican. On Countdown they seemed to think that this made Joe Biden the front-runner, but others have said that having a white male deliver the keynote suggests that the VP may be a woman (Kansas governor Sebelius being the obvious choice). Of course, this is undercut by the fact that the presidential candidate isn’t a white male.

I like Biden better than Bayh or Kaine, but I’m not a fan, especially after last year’s bankruptcy bill. Sebelius would be a decent choice, but I’m really not sure that adding a woman as VP would do much to reach out to white working class men (who are supposed to be less comfortable with Obama). After all, it would feed the fear that white men have lost control of the country, a popular meme. Including Al Gore wouldn’t solve the “elitist” whine, of course. But Gore does bring a lot of positives. As Kuttner says

• Stature? Definitely.
• National security credibility? Check.
• Believable as president if need be? That, too.
• Boring? That was the old Gore, not the new one. (And compared to whom? Biden? Bayh?)
• Help carry a key state? Gore is in own unique state, and the regional effect has been overrated since LBJ.
• Upstage Obama? Funnily, doesn’t seem so.

Obama-Gore would be my dream ticket.  That’s for certain.

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