Posted on: Sunday, May 11, 2008
COMMENTARY
Obama-Clinton ticket has drawbacks
By Chuck Raasch
Will the Dream Ticket become reality?
There are as many cons as pros, especially if Barack Obama is the Democrats' presidential nominee, a prospect that looks more likely as a steady trickle of Democratic superdelegates move to his side.
With the Illinois senator seemingly on an endgame road to the nomination, speculation has risen here and on the campaign trail about a fusion ticket, a merger of two heavyweight political figures that some Democrats — and even some breathless reporters and commentators — have posited as unstoppable.
But Clinton as No. 2 poses some unique problems for Obama the candidate and Obama the potential president. And the Democrats have other potentially attractive choices who could ease some of the hard feelings that are likely to follow should Clinton not land on the ticket this year.
Here are some of the pros and cons of Clinton joining with Obama on the Democrats' ticket.
Among the pros:
The New York senator appeals to powerful demographic sectors of the traditional Democratic coalition, especially white women, blue-collar voters and older voters. Obama has had varying degrees of trouble getting the votes of all three groups in primaries and caucuses so far.
She is a tough and relentless campaigner and would be well suited for the traditional attack role of vice presidential candidates of recent vintage.
She's a bridge to the centrist Clinton wing of the party and to an older generation of Democrats. Some Democrats also believe her Washington experience would help assuage real concerns in the party that Obama has no proven record of getting anything of consequence done in his short term in the Senate. And despite all the problems he brings, Bill Clinton would be a campaign asset in reaching out to white men, an Achilles' heel of the Democrats. They also make up about 40 percent of the electorate.
And the cons:
What it would say, symbolically. Many are focusing on the historic picture of a black man and white woman heading a ticket. The vice presidential choice is the first big decision of the nominee. Obama has run as a conciliator, ready and willing to work with Republicans and independents to get things done. Hillary Clinton is arguably the most polarizing figure on the American stage today. Symbolically, asking her to join the ticket would undermine the central theme and rationale of an Obama presidency.
Bill Clinton. It's about the governing. Some analysts and even some Democrats doubt that either Bill or Hillary could play second fiddle in an Obama White House. In a new essay, Rutgers University political scientist Gerald Pomper argues that an Obama-Clinton White House "would bring a President Obama sniping from his vice president and the anguish of the likely intrusive pretensions of Bill Clinton as a self-designated co-president."
For all the historic attributes of her candidacy, Hillary Clinton brings nothing unique to the table that others could not. She represents a state that is already reliably Democrat. Several Democratic female governors or senators in swing states could appeal to women but come with less "baggage," as Sen. Clinton herself has described her history. And others can help Obama shore up a lack of foreign policy experience better than Clinton can, including New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who as a Hispanic, would have powerful appeal in one of the nation's fastest-growing voting demographics.
In his essay, distributed through the "Crystal Ball" Web site of University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato, Pomper argues that a Clinton-Obama ticket "doesn't make sense" in "cold-hearted political terms."
He says Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, a Vietnam veteran and former Navy secretary, would be more help in appealing to white men who have quadrennially shunned the Democrats in presidential election after presidential election.
"The real gender gap is not caused by women but by men," Pomper writes.
Chuck Raasch is a political writer for Gannett News Service. Reach him at craasch@gns.gannett.com.
