When you ask any presidential nominee what the most important quality for a vice president is, they all say, in rather cliched fashion, that that person must be ready to assume the office of the president at a moment’s notice, i.e. that that individual must have the experience to be president.
So, I’d say that the Clintons, in basically making the case that Obama should be the veep to Hillary, have endorsed him as someone ready for the job. Otherwise, they would be picking someone who is not ready for the job and the Clintons would never pick someone who wasn’t ready just to win an election would they?
So, how then does this jive with HRC’s ridiculous notion that only she and McCain have passed her self-assessed test for commander-in-chief? Frankly it doesn’t.
If Obama is ready on day two, he’s basically ready from day one. The Clintons have endorsed him despite themselves. Obama should make this point early and often on the trail as he goes about telling people why he should be on the top of the ticket.
I’ve been scratching my head about this and many of my thoughts are echoed in the Globe article this morning. I think it’s obvious now that Senator Clinton doesn’t believe what she’s been saying about Senator Obama’s qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief. Or maybe she does and is pushing this because:
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p>I don’t know. Interested to see what others think.
…say the strategy is by inviting him on the ticket as VP confirms the not quite ready to be the President line (not to mention the calculated first step up to the moral High Road of a Unity Ticket coming from Camp Clinton)
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p>Make sense to me.
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p>Like everything in this debate, it is now about whom you support will depend on which color of glasses you view this through.
…your argument elevate rhetoric above meaning. First of all, your assertion admits that VP readiness is a cliche…then is based completely on said cliche.
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p>Rather, everyone knows that a VP is chosen to fill in the gaps of a presidential candidates electability. So, in fact, if Clinton believes that she is fully qualified to be Commander in Chief she would not be looking for a running mate who specifically could foot the same bill. There is of course no negative if you happen to get double coverage on some points but to suggest that VP running mates are chosen, routinely, to be perfect presidential surrogates is fatuous.
I don’t think you are going to win any converts with this line of argument.
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p>I am sure Clinton believes that she is more ready to be President than Obama, but does anyone believe that Clinton actually does not think that Obama is not ready to be President at all? If Obama is the nominee, is Clinton going to run as an independent or tell people to vote for McCain instead? I don’t think so.
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p>I think it is better for Obama and his supporters to spend more time making his own case for why he should be President and — while not ignoring it — spend comparatively less time responding to Clinton’s criticism of his candidacy.
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p>Regarding the VP slot, I think that it is enough for Obama to have said that he does not intend to run for VP. That defuses Clinton’s implication that people will also get Obama if they vote for her.
which is understandable given the tight race between two popular candidates who do not differ much on the issues.
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p>I don’t think this will matter.
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p>That said, isn’t lanugo right that there is a contradiction?
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p>The question, though, is what that would translate into in the general in the (unlikely!) event that Clinton wins the nomination and offers the veep slot to Obama and Obama accepts.
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p>Maybe something on the order of an attack on Clinton’s judgment–picking a veep that is not “commander-in-chief”-ish enough “on day one.”
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p>That strikes me as (a) weak and (b) easy to parry–she can say, for instance, that she will make sure that her VP will be ready on Day 1. (B) of course is silly (and shows how silly her whole CIC-threshold thing is), but I can’t imagine McCain making much hay with it or indeed the quality of the veeps deciding this race.
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p>Much more relevant to evaluate this gambit in the context of the current campaign.
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p>On that score she (1) gets to be nice from a position of strength (which she does not actually enjoy!), (2) boxing Obama in (he can’t exactly accept, can he? On the other hand, anything that looks like a rejection makes him the bad guy), while (3) changing the subject from her CIC-threshold remarks.
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p>I notice it dominated the news cycle for at least a day, too.
So if Hillary says anything vaguely opposite to Obama, she’s endorsing McCain and becoming a Republican. If she doesn’t, she’s endorsing Obama.
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p>Tails he wins, heads she loses.
Is that when he wins, or she loses?