The Veepstakes

So Hillary Clinton wants Barack Obama to be her vice president.
Isn’t that nice of her to offer? Never mind, as Obama pointed out on
March 10 in Mississippi, that he has won twice as many states as
Clinton, leads her in the popular vote, and is ahead of her in the
delegate count.

“I don’t know how someone in second place can offer the vice
presidency to someone in first place,” Obama said.

That’s a very sensible reaction, but of course, this is not about
either of them realistically becoming the other’s pick for the second
spot on the Democratic ticket. It’s about, as always, number one.
Clinton wants to be seen as the winner magnanimously handing out a
silver medal. Obama wants to remind you that he currently has the
gold.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the hollowness of all this, and of
Clinton’s gambit in particular, very clear when she told a Boston
television station: “The Clinton administration has fairly ruled [Obama
as VP] out by proclaiming that Senator McCain would be a better
commander in chief than Obama.” That’s very correct. The Clinton
campaign has been relentlessly questioning Obama’s qualifications, so
much so that one sometimes gets the feeling it would rather, if Clinton
can’t win, see a President McCain. All of which creates a situation
wherein, despite and because of her talking points, it becomes
logically consistent for Clinton to ask Obama to be her VP.

But don’t get too distracted. This VP chatter is just that: chatter.
Neither will be the other’s vice president. Obama doesn’t want to be
the next Al Gore, and Clinton doesn’t want to be second-in-command
again. However, if short-term interests (such as creeping up in
tracking polls) dictate that each of them should seem open to having
the other in the second spot, they’re willing to go there.

More relevant, in the long run, is the qualifications discussion
that the Clinton campaign has opened up with its attacks on Obama’s
fitness to be commander in chief. The discussion so far has chronicled
Obama’s relative lack of foreign-policy experience compared to, say,
McCain (though not to, say, Bill Clinton during his first run for the
presidency). But it is also just beginning to spark renewed interest in
Clinton’s claims that she “helped bring peace to Northern Ireland,”
dodged bullets in Bosnia, and negotiated to open the Kosovo
borders.

So far we’ve learned that no less an authority than Nobel Prize
winner Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, who did help bring peace to
Northern Ireland, thinks Clinton’s claims are “silly”; that the Kosovo
border opening in question actually occurred the day before Clinton
arrived for a visit as First Lady; and that the comedian Sinbad
strongly disputes Clinton’s claims about Bosnia.

This last one is, of course, the most entertaining installment in
the fight, with Sinbad, who was along with Clinton on the trip as part
of a USO mission, telling the Washington Post: “I think the
only red-phone moment was: ‘Do we eat here or the next place?'”