Below The Beltway

Reason Magazine’s Steve Chapman notes that picking Vice-Presidential running mates has changed over the years:

Time was you could pick a running mate with modest credentials purely for political reasons. But in recent decades, Americans have come to expect considerably more heft—which is why Dan Quayle was a liability to George H.W. Bush and why George W. Bush picked a No. 2 from a state with only three electoral votes that he was sure to carry anyway.

History suggests that running mates make little if any difference in the outcome of an election. So Obama and McCain have a duty to choose someone who would be both a useful contributor as veep and a suitable replacement as president.

(…)

In weighing how to vote in November, Americans have to wonder how McCain and Obama will handle the sort of difficult, inescapable, important decisions a president has to face. When they grapple with these matters, we won’t have to wonder.

Chapman has a point, but I don’t think that you can yet point to a single example in history where a Presidential candidate’s choice of running mate had a significant negative impact on the race, and 1988 is the perfect example of this.

There’s little doubt I think, that Bush’s selection of Quayle for his running mate was, in retrospect, not very politically smart, especially when you consider the reasons he was apparently chosen:

One reason for Bush’s choice of running mate, Senator Dan Quayle, was to appeal to a younger generation of Americans. Quayle’s good looks were praised by Senator John McCain: “I can’t believe a guy that handsome wouldn’t have some impact.”^[25]

If good looks were the main criteria, then there were a whole host of Hollywood celebrities who could have filled the role quite well. Based on experience, qualifications, and readiness to be President, though, it’s fairly clear that Quayle was far less qualified than any number of Republican alternatives — Jack Kemp and Pete duPont are the two that come mind immediately.

On the Democratic side, on the other hand, Dukakis’s selection of Lloyd Bentsen was pretty good — although I remember more than one person at the time saying that the ticket should have been Bensten/Dukakis and not Dukakis/Bensten.

But did it really matter ? Yes, the Bentsen vs. Quayle Vice-Presidential debate gave us one of the most memorable one-liners in recent political history, but the results of the election would seem to indicate that Quayle did nothing to hurt Bush 41, while Bentsen did little to help Dukakis. Seriously, what state colored blue in this map could Bush have won if he’d chosen a better running mate that Dan Quayle ?

Yea, I don’t see it either.

And this was in a Presidential Election when the Cold War was still a reality, though a fading one.

It’s possible that things have changed over the past 20 years and the the Veep choice has more of an impact on voter’s choices on the margin than it used to. If that’s the case then there’s one man responsible for that — Dick Cheney.

For better or worse, and even disregarding whether it’s Constitutional, Cheney has greatly expended the scope and presence of the Vice-Presidency over the past seven years and, if Americans are going to pay more attention to running mates from now on, we’ll have the former Congressman from Wyoming to thank for it.