Nate Silver crunched the numbers and pretty much proved that there is no one Mitt Romney can pick for a running mate who will make any difference whatsoever in the outcome of the election. At least, that is the case if we’re thinking about the candidate swinging their home state from Obama’s column into Romney’s, and thereby changing the outcome in the Electoral College. By Silver’s calculations, the two best options are Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who both max out by changing the outcome of the election 1.9% of the time in 50,000 simulations. McDonnell is the most likely to change the outcome in his home state, but Virginia rarely comes up as the tipping-point state.
This analysis should actually be helpful to Romney, because it should free him up from thinking it matters what state his running mate comes from. It’s almost impossible for that to matter. Far more important is what the running mate can do for the broad narrative of the election. For example, using Silver’s analysis, Tim Pawlenty would be among the worst possible selections, just a shade above Rick Santorum in the disaster category. That is because Minnesotans hate Pawlenty, and selecting him will actually make it modestly less likely that Romney will carry Minnesota. But, in reality, from a statistical point of view, there’s almost no difference between picking Pawlenty and Portman, or McDonnell.
What’s more important than home-state impact is how the candidate will be received by critical swing elements of the electorate, or by the base of the GOP. Tim Pawlenty would excite some elements of the evangelical base without antagonizing suburban women the way the selection of Mr. Forced Vaginal Ultrasound McDonnell would. New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez is very popular in her home state, but her selection would call to mind the selection of another inexperienced and not-well-known female governor four years ago. Sen. Portman would help Romney win Ohio and would probably be well-received by the press, but would help tie Romney’s economic policies to Bush’s economic policies. Each candidate brings unique strengths and weaknesses to the table, but none of them are likely at all to swing the election based on their home state.
My good-faith advice to Mitt: he should pick someone with military and foreign-policy credibility.
Foreign policy isn’t registering in the election now, but it has a way of sneaking up on you, and if the Martians invade Tallahassee and the press sticks fifty cameras in your face, you don’t want to be standing there next to Rick Scott or Paul Ryan saying “Uh…uh..uhh” to each other.
That’s good advice, but hard to execute.
Let’s stipulate that anyone from the House is going to look like a lightweight, even if they have vast experience.
Governors generally have little foreign policy experience.
Veteran’s of Bush’s foreign policy team are discredited.
That leaves the Senate, and take a look at the roster of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The ranking member, Dick Lugar, was just ousted from the Senate in a primary. Other members like Inhofe and DeMint are way too controversial. Sens. Lee and Rubio and Risch are sophomores. Sen. Barrasso is serving his first full term.
Sen. Corker is about the be elected to his second term, but he is positioned to take over Lugar’s position as the top GOP foreign policy expert in the Senate. The only other guy with any experience is Johnny Isakson of Georgia.
I’ve been surprised that Corker’s name never emerged, but according to your criteria, he might be the best bet.
If you expand the list to look at the Intelligence Committee, you can consider Sens. Burr, Chambliss, Blunt and Coats.
Blunt has too much baggage. Coats would probably cause problems with the base. Senator Burr could conceivably help in North Carolina, but he isn’t anyone’s idea of a foreign policy heavyweight. And Chambliss? I don’t know. I guess he could be considered.
sophomores should read freshmen. I don’t know how that happened.
How about Brent Scowcroft, former admiral and longtime conservative/Republican foreign policy and security guru, most recently seen calling the Iraq War a bad idea?
So the guy’s 87! He’s a feisty 87.
Even if he were 57, his selection would be a reputation of Republican fear-mongering in the Middle East and a decade of war there. No chance.
A “reputation?”
A little grammar, please. I believe you meant to say his selection would refudiate Republican fear-mongering in the Middle East and a decade of war there.
that’s a spell-correct error.
I knew you mean refudiate.
It’s clear from the context.
I assume you’re using Palin’s “refudiate” ironically when the actual word is “repudiate,” right?
He’s also a Mormon, and a foreign policy heretic (at least as far as most of Romney’s foreign policy advisers are concerned).
Yeah, but discredited to whom? We’re talking about the GOP voting base here. I understand a lot of folks have had their credibility shot even in the MSM, but look at how often and how blatantly Romney is getting away with lying. Meanwhile, Reince Priebus (sp?) has just broken the “liar” barrier of political rhetoric. There’s no telling where this handbasket will take us next.
But we’re not talking about the Republican voting base; we’re talking about the general electorate.
Among the general electorate, Bush’s foreign policy has been pretty well refudiated.
And Chambliss? I don’t know. I guess he could be considered.
He could? Just like Paul Ryan, I’d tell Willard to go for it. If there is one thing we know, especially now, it’s that the Obama campaign doesn’t fool around. Would Willard want Chambliss to overshadow his campaign? Because one thing I’d do is let America know that Chambliss hates veterans.
Dick Cheney is available. No worse than all the other so-called foreign policy, warmongering GOP experts.
Wow. The upside is terrific.
Since Mitt is already down with GWB’s voodoo economics might as well go for a twofer and appropriate his foreign policy as well. Of course, the Senate is also filled with Republicans that subscribe to the “Bush doctrine” as well and might not be quite as polarizing as Cheney since they aren’t as well known. Lieberman’s available.
Uh-oh. Lieberman would do it, too. And, unlike most of the rest of the GOP VP stable, he’d have nothing to lose, aside of course from another Presidential race–but he’s already used to that.
Speaking of Lieberman, I wonder suddenly what’s holding Lindsey Graham back? He’d certainly add some spice to the Romney ticket without stealing all the Mittney thunder.
Um, no…
Yes, nothing like adding a closeted gay man to hate-gays party.
It won’t be some foreign invasion that happens, it’ll be Greece leaving the Euro.
“who both max out by changing the outcome of the election 1.9% of the time”
Is that the state results only or the whole election?
It’s a two-step process.
First, you calculate how many times Romney wins the state when he would have otherwise lost.
Then you calculate how often that change in the state outcome winds up swinging the Electoral College from Obama to Romney.
Ultimately, the former is unimportant without the latter.
McDonnell can swing Virginia 25% of the time, while Portman can only swing Ohio 6% of the time. But they both change the outcome of the election 1.9% of the time.
Somehow, I doubt Willard will win Ohio even if he picks Portman as his running mate. Has anyone seen polls of Ohio lately?
Silver gives Portman slightly better than a 1 in 20 chance of flipping Ohio to Romney.
He picks Nikki Haley. Her presence on the ticket would rebut the war-on-women and angry-white-men themes and prepares her for a run against Hillary with Rubio (or really anyone even slightly latin) on the ticket (top or bottom) in 2016. Her 5 years in the house and current Governorship rebuts the ‘inexperienced’ thing but Romney strategically concedes on foreign policy except to sound real, real tough. She’s cute and mean and “tea parties”, a proven asset when rallying the Repug base. She’s also more capable and more Southern than Palin.
Can’t see it. Every cycle, the first priority is avoiding the mistakes of the previous cycle. Haley is too much like Palin in that she’s untested and risky. Perhaps it helps Romney with women but she’s very conservative and I’m dubious that very many women would vote for her on gender alone. Haley has also pretty much said she’s not interested.
Plus Haley’s approval rating in SC is below 40%. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/nikki-haley-approval-rating-increase_n_1448968.html
Unpopularity just makes her all the more willing to bail out on the Governor’s mansion. Her job wouldn’t be to deliver SC, obviously. As far as her supposed affairs, I seem to remember rumors that half the NBA had bagged Palin. Boring white guy with boring white guy ticket just won’t cut it any more. Comparisons to Palin based on what’s in their pants is a bit simplistic to say the least. Perhaps Rubio is the incremental step away from the two crackers and a platform approach, but I’m thinking he’s doomed by being a crook and from Florida, the laughing stock of all states. Not to mention that he’s Cuban, which doesn’t exactly excite strong feelings of brotherhood from other latin peoples, if that’s even going to effect their votes at this point.
Running a woman once was desperation. Running two in a row can be spun as a real and concerted attempt to break gender barriers. Giving people the chance to vote for a Mormon/Sikh ticket that will protect the dominance of old white men is the perfect opportunity for the right to have what the left had with Obama: They can tell themselves “see? I’m not a racist, theocratic misogynist after all”, yet still get the policies they want.
too many GOP consultants claim to have bedded her for that to be a wise choice.
Plus, she’s just a disaster of Palin-like proportions.
There is a different bubble out there where none of this penetrates, and it gets far better ratings than the truth. If she was radioactive, she wouldn’t be out there stumping right now and already asked to speak at the convention.
Why do you asse… er, ummmmm, people think that adding a woman to the R ticket is going help with the gender gap?
There are plenty of R women floating around: Haley, Martinez, Ayotte and all the rest. The gender gap is still there in those states where these women are currently powerful. NM and NH have huge gender gaps. Not in SC, but then the Pres’s approval rate in SC is roughly determined by the percentage of Black voters in the area being polled.
Any woman whose mind will be changed because the VP doesn’t have a penis is not going to change her mind. She’s already voting for Mittman.
Haley has said she doesn’t want to be picked more than once.
People always tend to see the veep pick as an opportunity when, in reality, it’s more of a trap. A good pick never helps very much. Lloyd Bentsen comes to mind. Much as he pleased certain elements of the party and base, Dukakis went down in flames anyway.
The best the nominee can do is to pick someone who pulls together his own party without hurting him elsewhere. Palin accomplished the former but was a disaster with independents. Both Clinton and Obama picked men who didn’t necessarily satisfy another faction of the party but added to an overall sense of competence.
In more normal times, a guy like Dick Lugar would be a great choice for Romney. Indiana’s no swing state but the guy has solid foreign policy credential and plays well to moderates. But in the era of teasanity, a guy who the NRA hates and inspires torches and pitchforks amongst the very people Romney most needs (and who don’t trust him to begin with) just wouldn’t do.
Romney is pretty well backed into a corner. He can’t pick McDonnell because the Republicans have too thoroughly alienated women. Jindal, Rubio, Ryan and a bunch of others are not safe picks for various reasons. Portman would be solid and safe albeit uninspiring, and he plays better than Pawlenty. I think he’s odds on favorite for that reason.
In normal times, Charlie Crist would be running at the top of the GOP ticket. As it is, he’s flirting with becoming a Democrat, and Portman is the conventional pick for Mitt’s VP. And, barring some sort of impulse to “go big” from Mitt or his handlers, Portman is where they’re likely to end up, because that’s how Romney plays his game.
Portman is probably the safest pick, aside from the fact that it gives Obama even more leeway to paint Romney as a Bush clone. Christie would probably be better, but for the fact that he can barely walk and his heart could explode at any time.
But a Laurel & Hardy ticket would be such fun.
Or a laurel and hearty handshake.
Romney has the Stan Laurel grin down and Christy has the Hardy girth. Visually a closer match than political cartoonists usually have to work with.
The VP pick is the single important, real time decision that the electorate gets to see from the nominee. Flub it in any of a number of ways and the nominee is toast.
Relevant criteria IMHO are:
Clinton, GWB, and Obama all passed that test. McCain failed and Kerry, Gore, BushI, and Dukakis fared only slightly better. Had there been real contest in 1996, it would have become obvious that hadn’t passed.
Any combination of inside(DC)/outside(state)prior elected positions of the nominees tends to be preferable if that experience is substantive and not based on a single or first term in office.
Probably better first to consider those that ran for POTUS. For the experience she/he gained in running and not so much for the voter support they accumulated in the process. (Would Bush/Cheney have had a chance to steal the election in 2000 against Gore/Bradley?) Nix those that scare the beejeebus out of “moderates” and have any foreseeable real or ethical/moral/legal difficulties. (That’s why Bill Richardson (otherwise the perfect fit for a Senate POTUS nominee) or Chris Dodd weren’t on the 2008 ticket. It’s also why Huckabee was/is a poor choice.) Plus those wannabe Presidents have stated that they are available.
While the data set is small, being VP on a losing ticket isn’t a great career move. Didn’t hurt FDR twelve years later in 1932 but he was only thirty-eight years old in 1920. OTOH unlikely to hurt any sitting GOP Senator not up for election in 2012. However, with less than two years in office as a Senator, Portman could be taking a bigger risk than some others.
You’re right, which state the VP nominee is from makes no difference at all.
At least not since GWB and Darth Cheney took a big stinky dump all over the 12th Amendment.
I think to balance the GOP ticket, Willard should pick..mmm..a HUMAN! Either that or just go whole-hog and see if Bender from Futurama would be willing to be VP.