Why Biden Has to Pick
Governor Gretchen Whitmer as Vice-President in Order
to Win the White House
Picking the vice-presidential candidate is the most
important decision made by any candidate for president because it is the only
governmental executive decision she or he makes before taking the Oath of
Office.
Joe Biden, the prospective Democratic Party nominee for
president, has promised to pick a woman for Vice-President, which is a
challenge. Given the advanced ages of both Trump and Biden, the vice-president
needs to be assessed in terms of executive ability and experience should that
person become president.
States Pick the President
There are only two centers of power in the American
system, the federal government, and the states. Presidents are picked by the
Electoral College, a device designed to keep the power to select the president
in the hands of the states. In effect, a presidential election is a collection
of 50 individual state election contests plus the District of Columbia.
The Constitution was a
compact of the states to create a central government to correct the weaknesses
of the Articles of Confederation. Wary of the absolute power of monarchs, the
states sought to ensure a central government that would not take their powers
away. So, the 10th Amendment,
"Rights Reserved to the States and People," says: "The
powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to
the States respectively, or to the people."
In
other words, the states ratified the Constitution with the understanding that
if the powers were not expressly given to the federal government, or
specifically denied to the states, then those powers belonged to the states or
the people.
One way the states and people kept power over the federal
government was by reserving to themselves the right to pick the chief
executive.
The Governors
In modern times, voters have favored for the presidency Governors
or persons with clear executive experience and competence. Of the 22 presidents
since 1892, ten have been elected Governor. William H. Taft was appointed
civilian Governor of the Philippines. Herbert Hoover was the food administrator
during World War I and organized the relief effort for Europe after the war.
Dwight Eisenhower was commanding general of the American forces in Europe
during World War II, not to mention being responsible for governing the
liberated zones in Africa, Italy and Germany. Thirteen of the 22 presidents in
the past 128 years had clear executive ability. Fourteen if you include Trump.
Of Senators who
became president, on the other hand, Harry Truman took us into the Korean War.
Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon brought us into Vietnam. Vice-President Nixon lost
his bid for Governor of California. It's clear that voters look for executive
competence in their presidents, so they are partial to governors, the second
most powerful political office.
Biden currently has four governors under active consideration for the
Vice-Presidency.
Michelle Lujan
Grisham, the Governor of New Mexico, is a Latina and member of a powerful
political family. Her grandfather was a judge of the Supreme Court of New
Mexico. New Mexico went handily for Clinton in 2016.
Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, a venture capitalist, Harvard
graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and Yale Law graduate, is a strong candidate, but for
her coming from the Northeast. Hillary carried Rhode Island by over 15%, and
Rhode Island is a small state, like Delaware, from where Biden comes.
Maggie
Hansen, the Senator from New Hampshire, formerly served as Governor. That is an
attractive combination except that she is from a small Northeast state, like Delaware,
Biden's home state.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer
from a state Hillary narrowly lost, but which Biden must win to succeed. Like
Michelle Grisham, Whitmer is Governor from a border
state, which gives the candidate a whiff of foreign policy experience and
credentials. Whitmer has an additional bonus. If she
is elected Vice-President, Garlin Gilchrist II, a
38-year-old engineer, would become the fifth African-American governor in
history and the fourth in modern times. That should satisfy the lobby that is
urging Biden to make a woman of color his running mate, a kind of consolation
prize. With Whitmer, Biden can kill two birds with
one stone.
Of the 36 candidates for governor in 2018, Whitmer did better than 14 while Grisham did better than
22, given that 28 of the races were won by incumbents or party member of the
previous governor, both did relatively well. So, while Grisham's credentials
are stronger on paper, the difference is that New Mexico is a Democratic state
with five electoral votes, while Michigan is a toss-up Biden needs to win with
16 electoral votes.
The New Mexico
Governor's race had 700,000 votes, and Michigan's had 4 million. So, even if
Grisham is marginally more popular in her state, Whitmer
has been vetted by far more people. Just to give a sense of what we're talking
about here, Grisham got 396,603 votes to win the governorship of New Mexico,
while Whitmer's 403,920 margin of victory over her opponent in
Michigan was more than Grisham's entire vote total.
The Black
Running Mate
There is now a
big push afoot for Biden to name a black running-mate. Because Biden is so
uninspiring, the theory is that people might get excited by the
vice-presidential candidate. People do not open their wallets and work their
tails off for a vice-presidential candidate. Furthermore, this kind of
affirmative action will sink Biden's campaign like a stone, or rather like a
George McGovern or a Walter Mondale.
Most
of the black elected officials in contention have come from high minority
districts, many having not faced an opponent in years. There are no black women
governors. Had Stacey Abrams won her race for Governor of Georgia, it might be
a different story. There is, however, a former Governor, a woman of color with
foreign policy credentials as a former Ambassador to the United Nations ‒
Nikki Haley, a Republican.
The House
Candidates
Biden
is also considering two black candidates who serve in the House of
Representatives: Val Demings and Karen Bass, national
unknowns from heavily minority districts.
The House has the power to impeach the president. Impeachment
is supposed to be an extraordinary tool, as it violates the separation of
powers by making the legislature into a judicial body. It was used only once in
American history until 1974 and has been used three times in the 46 years
since. I have always thought that George H. W. Bush because he served before
Watergate, would be the last president to have served in the House of
Representatives. Turning the impeachment process into a partisan political
tool, first with Nixon, then Bill Clinton, and now with Trump makes any member
of that body unelectable as president, if the voters care about separation of
powers, which I think they do. Hillary Clinton, while not a member of the
House, was special counsel to the Judiciary Committee during Nixon's
impeachment, which is probably just as tainting as being a House member.
In addition to
the impeachment power argument, there is the fact that the last three
presidents who tried to get elected to the House: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama each failed to win,
yet went on to become president. This historical pattern is not a
recommendation to pick a House member for Vice-President.
Also mentioned is Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. She
barely won her mayoral race by 832 out of less than 100,000 votes cast. Even
having a candidate like Keisha Lance Bottoms under serious consideration makes
Biden look weak.
The Senators
Biden
spent 36 years in the United States Senate before becoming Vice-President. The
ticket already has the Senate covered.
Of the current Senators under consideration for Vice-President,
most are from states guaranteed to go for Biden: Kamala Harris ‒
California, Elizabeth Warren ‒ Massachusetts, and Tammy Duckworth ‒
Illinois,. Only Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin might help to bring in a doubtful
state that voted for Trump in 2016, but Baldwin is gay, which might help solidify
Trump's support in the conservative heartland.
However, all
four of these senators called for Senator Al Franken to resign and voted to
convict Trump in his impeachment. Biden needs a female running mate who can not be attacked for doing those things, because Biden
didn't do them either.
The Staff
Option
In Washington,
staff members are becoming as or even more powerful than the elected
representatives. This phenomenon is partially driven by the need for elected
office holders to spend most of their time raising campaign funds.
Under consideration is Susan Rice, a democratic party
foreign policy advisor, brilliant, accomplished, but from Washington D.C.
Choosing Rice would be an inside the Beltway disaster. She has never run for
public office.
At a time
when Congress is so low in the public
esteem, a ticket of two Capital insiders would be a mistake. What the media is
failing to mention is the current extraordinary situation where the incumbent
president is running as the outsider while the challenger is the insider
candidate.
Biden's Choice
One of the truisms of presidential politics is that it
usually comes down to picking the Vice-Presidential candidate who does the
least harm. While the Vice-Presidential candidate does bring assets to the
ticket, she or he also brings liabilities. Biden's running mate, however, has
to be seen as able to be president in the event of succession.
Governor
Gretchen Whitmer is the strongest candidate for Biden.
Grisham looks good on paper, but a ticket where both candidates come from small
states would be an anomaly. Bill Clinton was the first president from a small
state since before the Civil War.
In forty years of non-partisan election analysis, I have
discovered another truism: prior experience winning votes is a perfect
predictor of winning votes in the future. That is why every president this
century, except for Clinton, came from a big state: McKinley, Taft, and Harding
- Ohio; the Roosevelts, Eisenhower, and Nixon - New
York (not to mention the 2016 race where both major party candidates were from
New York); Coolidge and Kennedy - Massachusetts; Hoover and Reagan -
California; Truman - Missouri; Johnson and both Bushes - Texas; Carter -
Georgia; Ford - Michigan; and Obama - Illinois.
Biden comes
from Delaware, one of the smallest states in the union.
No matter which woman Biden chooses, don't be completely
surprised if Donald Trump drops Mike Pence and takes Nikki Haley as his running
mate.
This is going
to be a close race.
If
the news can be believed, Biden's choice is being driven more by the internal
politics of the Democratic Party than by any objective assessment of the
national political landscape. Elections today are determined by independents.
During the primaries, as the Democratic establishment increasingly backed
Biden, it seemed that the Democrats would rather lose with Biden than win with
Sanders. Whitmer is Biden's best hope for winning and
stopping Trump.
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