Friday, April 22, 2016

VP List

GOP candidates begin making their Vice-President lists.

I was thinking about this a couple of weeks ago. I would have liked to know early on who the candidates thought would be a good choice for VP. I didn't want a list that the candidates would be held to, just an idea of the people each candidate thought would make a good second-in-command. In some ways, that would tell us more about the candidates than their campaign speeches do.

What strengths do the VP choices have? (Telling us what the candidate thinks her/his areas of weakness are and whether they are aware of areas of weakness.) Or maybe they would just look for a VP that can get a different area of the country. Or a different demographic (women, younger people, more rural voters...).

In spite of thinking that I'd like to see the candidates' choices, I haven't given much thought to who I would like those choices to be. Nikki Haley has come out as being for anyone but Trump, but I think it would be very interesting to see if he could bring her around as his VP candidate.

I think Hillary Clinton will go with a man - or maybe just anyone who isn't Elizabeth Warren - I think a popular (among liberals) female would be too threatening to her. Julian Castro is a likely pick. Clinton might pick him in the hopes that he would bring the Hispanic vote.

It's possible that the two final candidates would pick a running mate that had also been trying to become president - Trump picking Kasich, for example. I hope not. One of the reasons I think the VP selection is interesting is because we've seen so much of the presidential candidates that there doesn't seem to be anything new and exciting about them. A VP that isn't already in the running (or was in the running until recently) wouldn't bring the excitement that a new face would. Because Clinton has been around and in politics since forever, I think she needs that newness more than Trump does.

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