August 9, 2012
From Dan Quayle to Sarah Palin to Mini-Mitt: What the Veep Choice Will Reveal
As you may have noticed, I’ve largely avoided speculating about Mitt
Romney’s choice of a running mate. That’s partly because I don’t have
any inside information and partly because of something I learned back in
1988, when I was a young whippersnapper covering the Presidential
election for the Sunday Times of London. At the Republican
convention, in New Orleans, Vice-President George H. W. Bush stunned
almost everybody by picking Dan Quayle, a young senator from Indiana, as
his running mate.
After a string of gaffes on Quayle’s part, following questions being
raised about his résumé and lack of experience, the Bush campaign sent
in the heavies to shore him up: James Baker and Roger Ailes. At the
start of October, I flew with some of the Bushies from Washington to
Omaha, Nebraska, where Quayle was set to debate Senator Lloyd Bentsen,
twenty-six years his senior. The atmosphere on the campaign plane was
light. Baker had promised we’d see a new Quayle—“steady, serious, and
substantive.” I played blackjack with Richard Bond, Bush’s deputy
campaign manager, and Gerry Boyd, a Times reporter who went on to
become the paper’s first African-American assistant managing editor.
(As I recall, I won almost fifty dollars.) When we got to Omaha, I
sneaked into a debate rehearsal, where Ailes, even then an acknowledged
master of television, was putting Quayle through his paces. “Roger,”
Quayle said at one point. “If I decide I want to gesture over there at
some point, you don’t mind that. That’s all right?”
Once the real debate started, it all went to
hell. A tense Quayle garbled the English language in his inimitable
fashion, and Bentsen famously remarked, “Senator, I served with Jack
Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine.
Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” The next morning, the mood on the
campaign plane was anything but light. “Dan Quayle is not running for
President,” Bond insisted to the reporters. “The discussion in the next
thirty days is going to be between George Bush and Michael Dukakis, not
Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen.” One of the writers asked Bond, “Are you
saying Quayle is irrelevant?” To which the G.O.P. operative replied, “I
wouldn’t use those words.”
The weekend following the debate, I wrote, “Dan Quayle is quickly
becoming the one thing that could lose the American election for George
Bush—an election most pundits thought he had in the bag a couple of
weeks ago.” (The article also included some of the details contained in
the previous two paragraphs.) But Bond, who years later served as
chairman of the Republican National Committee, turned out to be right.
Quayle was irrelevant. Burdened by a Vice-Presidential candidate widely regarded as a dolt, Bush crushed Dukakis by almost eight percentage points and carried forty states.
In 2008, Sarah Palin reprised the role of clueless running mate,
providing the press corps with even more entertainment than Quayle had
done twenty years earlier. But Palin, like Quayle, didn’t have much, if
any, impact on the result. By the middle of August, before John McCain
announced his choice of Veep candidate, Barack Obama was already holding
a steady lead in the polls, which he never relinquished.
Now there’s another veepstakes, with speculation that an announcement
of the candidate’s name could come as early as today. Rather than
trying to make predictions, it may be more productive to assess what
Romney’s choice might mean.
If he does what most of the pundits expect
and picks Rob Portman, the junior Senator from Ohio, or Tim Pawlenty,
the former Governor of Minnesota, it indicates that the Mittster,
despite all the polls, remains fairly confident of victory. Both Portman
and Pawlenty are mini-Mitts: moderate, non-ideological technocrats who
hardly set the pulses racing. Portman is justifiably the favorite,
because he could conceivably help swing Ohio in Romney’s favor, which
would be huge. But as Nate Silver pointed out
yesterday, Portman’s popularity ratings in Ohio are unimpressive, and
his impact on voting patterns there is likely to be small. Outside of
the Buckeye state, Portman is practically unknown, and it’s hard to
conceive of him having any impact at all. Which means it only make sense
for Romney to pick him if he believes he’s already running strong
nationally, and a little lift in Ohio could put him over the top.
Other names often mentioned as having a decent chance are Congressman Paul Ryan (whom Ryan Lizza wrote about in the magazine last week) and Senator Marco Rubio (whom Ken Auletta wrote about in January).
If Romney picks either of them it will suggest he thinks his campaign
is in trouble and he needs to shake things up. Either Ryan or Rubio
would energize the G.O.P.’s conservative base. With support from the Tea
Party and from socially conservative hispanics, Rubio could also help
Romney carry Florida, although there’s quite a bit of debate about how much sway
he really has with non-Cuban Latinos. But picking either Ryan or Rubio
would be a big gamble. Rubio has résumé issues, such as the changing
story of how his parents arrived in America. Ryan wants to privatize
Medicare, at least partly.
Then there is a quartet of governors who could possibly be
chosen—Chris Christie (New Jersey), Nikki Haley (South Carolina), Bobby
Jindal (Louisiana), and Bob McDonnell (Virginia)—plus any number of
others, including, I suppose, General David Petraeus, whose name Matt
Drudge has been bandying around.
Picking any of these lot would represent a Hail Mary pass. Christie,
Haley, and McDonnell have all been in office for less than three years,
and all three are untested on the national stage. When Jindal got a
chance to appear on that stage, presenting the rebuttal to President
Obama’s first State of the Union speech, he muffed it. Petraeus, who is currently running the C.I.A., might well turn down the offer.
If I were making the choice, since I think the Romney campaign is in
serious bother, I would take a punt on Rubio or Christie, hoping that it
would alter the dynamics. Both of them are good speakers who revel in
attacking Democrats and geeing up Republican activists. The selection of
either would add a bit of spice to the race, and by taking the media
spotlight off Romney for a while it could do him a big favor. Since
Florida is so important—the Electoral College math is such that it’s
hard to see how Romney can be elected if he doesn’t come out on top
there—I’d probably end up going with Rubio.
But my hopes would be tempered by the memory of Quayle, Palin, and
all the other Veep candidates who garnered acres of newsprint and didn’t
count for much on Election Day. In fact, here’s a challenge: Can
anybody think of a running mate who made a substantial difference?
Lyndon Johnson in 1960, perhaps, when J.F.K. carried Texas by fewer
than fifty thousand votes. But that’s a special case. To this day, many
Republicans insist L.B.J.’s Democratic machine stole the election. And setting aside dear old Lyndon, it’s hard to think of anybody.
Illustration of Marco Rubio by Steve Brodner.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/08/from-quayle-to-palin-to-mini-mitt-what-the-veep-choice-will-reveal.html#ixzz23BjLZKob