The Veep Picks: What's the Rush?

[WhiteHouseForum]

Time.com - Suddenly, everyone wants to talk about running mates. Tomorrow's trivia questions are the titans of today - Midwestern governors, swing state senators, retired generals. Recent history says the winners will be announced days or even weeks before the conventions in late August. But what's the hurry? At least one party ought to revive tradition by dropping the bombshell while the delegates are gathered.

Barack Obama could use his veep announcement to drown out any lingering voices of unhappiness from Sen. Hillary Clinton's army of convention delegates. A story on Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal reminds us that plenty of Clinton backers are not yet happy campers. They want to nominate their candidate as the world watches and cast 1,600 votes, as a powerful reminder that Obama's victory was floss-thin.

Journalists searching for news in Denver will find this theme irresistible. A modern convention is choreographed as if by Balanchine with scripts tight enough for Chekov - and any brawl is more interesting than a coronation. Few know this better than the Clinton family, which had to deal with the bruised feelings of former California Gov. Jerry Brown's delegates at the 1992 convention that nominated Bill Clinton.

Obama might steer the spotlight away from Clinton's delegates by making actual news of his own. He would be the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to spring his running mate on the gathered conventioneers, and if his choice is popular on the floor he might even buy a couple of peaceful news cycles.

One problem: "It doesn't leave much time to integrate the running mate into the campaign and get them up to speed," says veteran Democratic convention planner Michael Berman. With the convention already pushed almost to Labor Day, a slow-starting No. 2 might not be fully deployed, with staff and stump speech, "until sometime in September, and I think that's too late," Berman concludes.

Also, naming a running mate in the glare of a convention can be risky, as George H.W. Bush learned when he introduced a bouncingly boyish Dan Quayle to skeptical reviews during the 1988 Republican convention in New Orleans. It's probably no coincidence that after that experience, GOP candidates joined the Democrats in rolling out their partners in advance.

But many of the forces that have pushed candidates to speed up their choices don't apply to Obama. If the trend toward earlier and earlier announcements makes sense for anyone this year, it's Republican Sen. John McCain.

A bit of history: Until the 1980s, running mates were chosen primarily to placate party factions and broaden geographic appeal. John F. Kennedy didn't want Lyndon B. Johnson in his White House in 1960, but he needed Johnson's Texas in his win column. Gerald R. Ford was pressured by the GOP's conservative wing to drop liberal Nelson Rockefeller from his 1976 ticket in favor of the more rightward Bob Dole.

In 1984, however, Democrat Walter Mondale found himself in need of a miracle against incumbent President Ronald Reagan. Mondale, who joined Carter's ticket on the third day of the 1976 convention, broke with traditional timing by naming Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate a week before the party gathered in San Francisco. Mondale turned his one-week convention bounce into a two-week sensation - not that it mattered much. Reagan was reelected in a landslide of historic proportions.

Since then, candidates have used early veep announcements as a tool to shape their images and grab the spotlight from the incumbent. These are tall orders in the era of public financing of presidential campaigns, because by summer, campaigns have traditionally run out of money for the primaries but haven't yet received general election funds. The period before the conventions is when they need free media the most.

So we had Bill Clinton in the doldrums of July 1992 announcing that he was choosing Al Gore for an all-youth ticket. Four years later, Dole infused his campaign with testosterone by drafting Hall of Fame quarterback Jack Kemp for his team. In early August of 2000, Gore distanced himself from the incumbent by pairing with Clinton critic Joseph Lieberman.

By 2004, the linkage between conventions and running-mate rollouts was almost completely broken. Democrat John Kerry announced his choice of John Edwards nearly three weeks before his party gathered.

Obama doesn't have money problems; indeed, his campaign is so cash-rich that he reversed himself last month and declared he will not participate in the public - financing program. He's not struggling in the shadow of an incumbent - rather, he continues to dominate free media coverage long after his epic battle with Clinton has ended. Judging from Obama's light schedule and middle-of-the-road rhetoric in recent weeks, he's looking for less coverage these days, not more.

McCain is the one who might benefit from the jolt that comes from launching a running mate. While Obama is trying to brand McCain as nothing more than an older George Bush, the right running mate could help McCain break symbolically from the White House. It could elevate the excitement around McCain's campaign and possibly energize fundraisers.

And McCain isn't hearing the sort of gripes and grumbles from the camps of vanquished rivals that continue to haunt Barack Obama. He doesn't need to hold a headline in reserve. View this article on Time.com.