There are two articles out today claiming that, in his heart, Barack Obama wanted to pick someone other than Joe Biden as his running mate, but that political considerations led to his decision to pick someone who has been in the Senate since Obama was in High School.
One writer says that the object of Obama’s heart was Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius:
In selecting Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate, Sen. Barack Obama may have selected the safe pick, but according to several campaign insiders, Biden wasn’t necessarily his first or even his personal choice.
“He really wanted [Kansas Gov. Kathleen] Sebelius,” says one Obama insider with knowledge of the Democrat candidate’s vetting process. “And if our European tour had played better here at home, she might have been the pick.”
But, says the insider, the campaign’s internal polling indicated what the public polling indicated — that Obama failed in his European sojourn to build out his foreign policy credentials. “We needed the foreign policy on the bottom of the ticket more than we want to admit,” says the insider.
Sebelius would have helped Obama in several other ways domestically, particularly in the Midwest, where her success as a moderate governor in a borderline “red” state would have perhaps diluted his extreme leftist tendencies.
But beyond his failure to create the impression that he had any foreign policy experience, Obama’s polling also indicated that Sebelius’s presence on the ticket probably further damaged his relationship with Hillary Clinton supporters. “We have enough problems with them as it is. Putting Sebelius on the bottom of the ticket would have been another stick in the eye,” says another adviser.
You’ve got to wonder how Governor Sebelius and her supporters feel after reading something like this. Barack wanted you on the ticket, Kathleen, but, you know, there’s this other woman out there…..
Of course, she would probably have felt worse if she read another article out today saying that it was Virginia Governor Tim Kaine who Barack really wanted on the ticket:
NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell thinks Sen. Barack Obama would have preferred to pick Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine as his running mate, over Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.
“I think their lack of supreme confidence is reflected in the Biden choice,” Mitchell said this morning on MSNBC. “If Barack Obama had followed his heart he would have chosen Tim Kaine of Virginia. Tim Kaine is someone he knows well, (and) is really close to.”
Mrs. Alan Greenspan doesn’t really cite any evidence for her assertion that Obama really wanted Kaine to be his running mate, nor does she provide an argument for how Kaine, who apparently has forgotten that the State of Maryland exists, would have helped the ticket in any appreciable respect.
Nonethless, we have two reports that Obama was involved in some battle between his heart and his head, what one is to make of that I’m not entirely certain.
