The NYT has been covering its bases in recent days by producing profiles of two leading candidates for Obama's VP slot - Evan Bayh and Tim Kaine.
Both candidates are impressive but carry serious risks. Bayh's quite young but already very experienced - he's been a governor and is now a senator. He's very popular in Indiana, an historically red state Obama would dearly love to turn blue. He looks nice (apart from that haircut) and he's kind of dull, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in a veep candidate or indeed a veep.
What I still don't get, though, is how he'd be able to get over his vote for the Iraq war in 2003. Obama has made his judgment on that issue so central to his campaign, that I don't see how Bayh headlines the convention's national security night and avoids the subject. Does he offer a soapy mea culpa (or at least mea dupa) plea and apologise for his vote? John Edwards, who knows a thing or two about apologising, did this during his campaign. In fact maybe that's it; Bayh could say he got the war 99% right!
As for Kaine, he sounds like a clever, likeable, decent and a great speaker, but he hasn't accomplished much politically. Funnily enough Obama loves him. Then there's this:
“He’s just Tim, at church,” said Barbara Williford, who met the Kaines at St. Elizabeth’s in 1984 and is godmother to the youngest of their three children. “People say ‘governor’ and he looks and says, ‘Who’s here?’ because he’s not expecting that.”
David Brent (Michael Scott) or what?
Comments