08.20.07
Hillary Clinton’s Other Mate
The Stanley Fish blog on the NY Times has a post looking at Hillary’s potential running mates this morning. This kind of piece does a lot to reinforce the “Hillary is inevitable” meme. I’m tempted to buy into it myself. Hillary’s been running the best campaign so far, and she’s been effective in all the debates. (Except for that quip about lobbyists representing the real America.)
At the same time, I know that the Hillary machine is trying to project a sense of inevitability. It’s all part of their plan, and I don’t want to buy into it.
A couple reactions to the article I linked to:
- Fish dismisses Obama as a VP candidate too quickly. So we’re ready for a black president, we’re ready for a woman president, but not both at the same time? I don’t buy it. No one’s accused Hillary of being charismatic, and a Hillary/Obama ticket could generate a lot of excitement to get out the vote.
- I suspect Fish’s pick is Bill Richardson. He’s been a governor (unlike Hillary) and Fish believes that he pulls a best of both worlds that Obama cannot: he’s a minority, but still looks white and has a white-sounding name. I’m still skeptical of all this talk that the voters will freak out if a ticket has no white male. But Fish’s other point about Richardson is excellent: his main problem now is that he has difficulty staying on message, and has delivered some really brain-dead responses to unexpected questions. I have great faith that the Hillary camp would whip him into shape.
I’m still rooting for Barack Obama to win the nomination, but if Hillary does win, I’d be happy with either of the pairings mentioned above.