Washington watch

The candidates face the tricky choice of running mates. Can the Obama love-in last? Plus, the neocons rally to McCain, but did he nearly join the Democrats in 2001?
March 28, 2008

That tricky vice-presidential choice

The candidates' selection of running mate may be crucial. John McCain would like to steal the centre ground by picking his closest chum in the Senate, former Democratic Veep candidate Joe Lieberman, now an independent who usually votes with the Dems. But that would outrage his surly conservative base, so McCain may go for Florida governor Charlie Crist. The conservatives, though, are demanding a woman: the stodgy but sound Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Hillary Clinton has a shortlist of two, each picked to deliver a marginal state: charisma-challenged Indiana senator Evan Bayh and former Virginia governor Mark Warner. But the party wants Warner to win an open Senate seat in Virginia and Bayh is a soporific campaigner. So Clinton is now wooing her former rival for the candidacy Bill Richardson. But Obama is wooing him too. Obama's wild card would be Colin Powell, who has just become a discreet adviser to his campaign. Obama has worried his liberal staffers by musing that Powell might be more useful as defence secretary to handle the Iraq withdrawal.

Inspiration vs experience


For both Republicans and Democrats, this primary season has been about a choice between competence and inspiration. The Republican version of inspiration—the "duty, honour, country" code that John McCain learned at the naval academy—prevailed over the business experience of Mitt Romney. For the Democrats, who like to fall in love with their candidate, things may not be settled before the late August party convention in Denver. Obama's inspirational rhetoric has gained him a surging momentum, but the question is whether the infatuation with him can last until November, bearing in mind the Republicans' traditional skill at character assassination.

Gallup began polling on inspiration vs experience in January. 52 per cent of Americans said they preferred "a candidate who is a tested leader but who is not that inspiring," compared to the 43 per cent who picked "a candidate who is inspiring but who has not been tested."

The country has been here before. In 1952, the Dems were "madly for Adlai," thrilling to the rhetoric of Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson. But he lost the presidential election heavily to a military man, Dwight Eisenhower.

Obama's honeymoon

Obama's honeymoon with the media is so intense that the New York Times has started rotating correspondents, lest they get too enamoured. But it may be ending, given Obama's reluctance to give press conferences and his staff's habit of pressing the "mute" button during conference calls to preclude questions. The hacks on the press bus were even asked to dial into a conference call in which Obama announced a routine endorsement by a congressman, when the congressman could easily have told them himself. In Nevada, the press were reduced to shouting questions at Obama during a kitchen photo-op at the Mirage hotel. Obama has never had to cope with an angry, suspicious or frustrated press pack, but his cavalier treatment may yet produce one.

Remember the neocons?

The neocons rallied early to John McCain, rounded up by Dan Quayle's old chief of staff Bill Kristol, now editor of the Weekly Standard. John Bolton, the worst UN ambassador in US history, and former CIA director Jim Woolsey have joined the team, along with Randy Scheunemann, fellow veteran of Kristol's Project for the New American Century and the infamous Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Kristol's old chum Mark Wittman, who runs a website named The Bull Moose in honour of Teddy Roosevelt, gave McCain a Roosevelt reading list and turned him into a patriot-populist Bull Mooser, although he and Kristol prefer the phrase "national greatness" conservative.

Wittman and Scheunemann wrote a key speech McCain gave in 1999, in which he said: "The United States is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history… We have every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity's benefit." These days that translates into the policy McCain calls "rogue-state rollback." This means being ready to stay in Iraq, as McCain has said, "for 100 years." The strategy for Iran was summed up last April at a South Carolina rally, when McCain, to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann," sang "Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran…"

McCain the Democrat?

One big reason for the wariness of conservatives towards McCain can be found in Like No Other Time, a book by former Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle. Daschle recounts the two months he spent in 2001 trying to get McCain to cross the aisle and join the Democrats, giving them a clear Senate majority. The talks included guarantees that McCain would keep his committee chairmanships. Photocopies of key pages were distributed at January's CPAC conservative conference. McCain insists: "As I said in 2001, I never considered leaving the Republican party, period."