The Times has a piece today about the Kerry/Edwards campaign, a reluctant partnership that seems to have been part of the reason they didn't succeed in '04. Edwards still wanted to be president. The two couldn't agree on a campaign slogan. Edwards wouldn't play attack dog. The list goes on; the two just didn't fit as running mates, and the campaign couldn't deliver a unified, clear message about what a Kerry/Edwards White House would look like.
It's an interesting tale for today's race. At last week's debate, Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates if they would support any of the potential eventual nominees. All said yes (well, Kucinich qualified his response with "Only if they oppose war as an instrument of policy"). But would (and should) they want to share a ticket?
On the running mate front, of course there was Tom Friedman's asinine suggestion earlier this week that an Obama-Cheney ticket would make for good Iran policy. But in seriousness, who the candidates pick -- whether it's among each other, or outside the ranks of the current presidential field, will have a major impact on how they fare in the general election. Earlier in the season, there were musings about the efficacy of a Clinton-Obama ticket (or an Obama-Clinton ticket), but as the campaign becomes more and more of a spitting contest between the two, that possibility seems less likely, and possibly even a bad idea, as it's uncertain that any of the three frontrunners would be able to put up a unified front as running mates. And it's already pretty clear that Edwards doesn't really want to be vice-president.
On the GOP side, the bickering has been less extreme, lending to the possibility that we could very well see a Giuliani-Huckabee ticket or some other combination among the top four. The possibilities for balancing the ticket between a hawkish foreign policy candidate and a socially conservative candidate, with both having spent the past nearly two years getting face time with voters, is a lot richer there -- and somewhat troubling.
--Kate Sheppard
