(Bloomberg Opinion) --
I suppose I might as well get my veepstakes item out of the way now, since pretty much everyone agrees that Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic presidential nominee, and since he’s raised the topic this week by committing to selecting a woman as his running mate.
Most political scientists have found that running mates just don’t make much of a difference in general-election outcomes — perhaps a percentage point or two in their home states, but that’s about it. So my advice to Biden or any nominee is always the same: Be risk-averse when it comes to the general election, and after that pick someone who would be good at the job and at the presidency.
If vice presidents can’t help a ticket much, they surely can harm one if they wind up involved in scandal. It’s not certain to destroy a candidacy or even necessarily hurt it — scandal-ridden running mates such as Richard Nixon in 1952, Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Dan Quayle in 1988 probably didn’t actually cost Dwight Eisenhower, Walter Mondale or George H.W. Bush any votes. But there is evidence that Sarah Palin was damaging in 2008, and it’s almost certain that the withdrawn selection of Thomas Eagleton contributed to the disaster that was George McGovern’s 1972 general-election campaign.
What these selections have in common is that none of them had previously run for president. And that’s my advice: Choose someone who has not only won a statewide campaign but has been vetted by running a national campaign. For Biden, that would more or less limit him to senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and perhaps Kirsten Gillibrand (the “perhaps” only because her campaign was so brief). That kind of vetting isn’t foolproof by any means, and it excludes plenty of people who would be perfectly fine vice presidents. But it’s probably the best way to be safe.
The other reasonable consideration is using the slot to repair any significant splits in the party. Hillary Clinton didn’t do that in 2016 when she chose a mainstream liberal, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, rather than reaching out to Bernie Sanders and his supporters with a selection to make them happy. My general sense is that vice-presidential selections can only fix party splits in rare circumstances. Better to be risk-averse, unless it’s absolutely clear that the running-mate choice will have a significant effect on party unity.
The reason the vice-presidential selection is important is that a whole lot of vice presidents eventually become president, one way or another. That’s a very good reason for Biden to choose carefully. But don’t expect the choice to make much of a difference this November.
1. Rui Zhong at the Monkey Cage on coronavirus mistakes made in China and in the U.S.
2. Rick Hasen on the need for Congress to act on no-excuse absentee voting.
3. Dan Drezner has argued that the system worked during the last crisis. This time he’s not sure it is.
4. Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb on what U.S. hospitals should be doing.
5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Karl Smith on the stimulus package.
6. Neil Irwin on the economic crisis.
7. Jessica Gold at Made by History on Taylor Swift and the coronavirus.
8. Adam Serwer on the Sanders movement after Sanders has essentially been defeated.
9. And Greg Sargent is correct: Lying doesn’t actually help Trump. New example? Trump implausibly claimed at his Tuesday press conference that he had taken the pandemic seriously all along. Since he obviously had not done so, the media spent a lot of the rest of the day knocking down that preposterous claim — all media space that could have been used on the better moments from Trump’s appearance. Yes, his strongest supporters will believe whatever he says. But they’re going to support him whether he lies or not, so he’s not actually helping himself with them, either.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.
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