Much Ado Nothing: Why the Hype over the VP is Pointless

Since Barack Obama and John McCain became their respective parties nominees a month or so ago, the media has been abuzz about who each man will select as their running mate. Pundits have been figuratively leaping over one another in the quest to figure out who the #2 person will be on the ticket. Chuck Todd of NBC News drafted a running list of contenders, and he has also devoted a full column to solving a question that has confounded, and invigorated scholars for years: should a nominee go with comfort or convention in their VP search? (/sarcasm)

I guess one can't really blame the media for being all a flutter about the search. After all, Obama's campaign keeps their prospective list, and the overall vetting process as a whole as secretive as possible.

Given this, seemingly every story the media has hither to produced regarding the search always reminds us of how pivotal a decision this will be. Walter Shapiro offered the coup de gras of hype when he asserted on Salon.com that:

"Aside from being a horse trainer inflamed with dreams of winning the Triple Crown, there may be no job in America with greater potential rewards and greater risk of abject failure than heading a vice-presidential search team. "

The furor over who will become Vice President has metastasized to a point where, for the first time I can remember, a candidate has used the prospect of selecting a VP as a way of stealing the spotlight. Earlier in the week, Bob Novak reported that McCain may be close to selecting his VP, with the ultimate decision even possibly coming within a few days.

As it turned out, Novak had been but a mere pawn in a scheme concocted by the McCain campaign in an ultimately futile attempt to deflect attention away from Obama as he traversed the Middle East. That the McCain campaign views the selection of the VP as their proverbial trump, the ultimate way to garner the spotlight if you will, shows you a lot about how vociferous and unrelenting the story has become.

Given all the hullabaloo, whomever Obama and McCain selects must ostensibly have a tangible impact on their counterparts electoral prospects, right?. The media couldn't have spent these last few weeks shunning other stories in favor of feverish reporting on John McCain's decision to invite Romney, Crist and Jindal to his Sedona abode for no discernible reason. All of the caterwauling about whether or not Hillary Clinton will be named to the #2 post on the ticket couldn't be utterly inconsequential, could it?

In actuality, all of the frenetic reporting and discussion has belied the the profound lack of importance the Vice President possesses in terms of getting his running mate elected. Amidst all of the furor, no one decided to consult the historical record of recent Presidential elections. If they had, they would summarily have eschewed the conversation about who would become the eventual VP, because they would realize that it almost never matters. Recent Presidential history has time and time again illustrated how impotent the VP is with respect to assisting the viability of their running mate.

From the 1956 re-election victory of Dwight Eisenhower over Adlai Stevenson to the George W. Bush garnering a 2nd term in 2004, the Vice President has only affected the outcome of the race positively for the President 1 time. That lone instance was the 1960 election when John F. Kennedy selected LBJ, a favorite son of the Hill Country, to push him over the top in Texas and garner that 24 electoral votes of that state. As mentioned, LBJ's presence helped Kennedy in Texas, however, that victory was far from the decisive winner, as Kennedy defeated Nixon by 83 electoral votes.

But even as pedestrian as the help LBJ provided for JFK ultimately turned out to be, it's stentorian compared to the impact VP's have levied in the 10 elections since 1960. In the landslides of 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984 and 1996, the margin of victory was so pronounced that the VP selection was almost irrelevant. Ronald Reagan could probably have selected a monkey as his VP in 1984 and still won.

The other 6 elections were closer, but the outcome in each was hardly influenced by the presence of a certain individual on a ticket, despite the express purpose of the VP being to tangibly impact the race. Hubert Humphrey lost 1968 by more than 100 electoral votes to Nixon, a fact which made the 4 electoral votes that Ed Muskie siphoned off from Maine a mere pittance. Ford selection of Bob Dole did absolutely nothing for the ticket, and as Ford unfortunately found out way too late, Dole does a better job selling Viagra than selling Gerald Ford. In 1992, Dan Quayle was an liability, not an asset as the VP candidate. Either way, Bush lost because of Ross Perot, not because of the wrong pick for his second in command. The 2000 election has been proven to be fixed, so it's hard to rationally analyze anything about it, much less about whether or not Joseph Lieberman had a tactile impact on how Al Gore fared.

Last, but not least is the 2004 contest between John Kerry and George W. Bush. This contest is most emblematic of the axiom that the VP, even if he is expressly selected to deliver a certain state, is largely irrelevant in voters' minds when it comes to down to decision making. John Edwards was selected almost entirely because of his Southern roots, and in the end, he delivered a whopping 0 states from that region to the Kerry ledger.

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All in all, modern Presidential history has been decided by a litany of different factors; an incumbents perceived indifference and incompetence on the economy (GHW Bush), a lesser known candidate being demonized as a war monger by his opponent (Barry Goldwater), or a popular vice president having his fate decided by a partisan Supreme Court (Al Gore). The selection of the VP has never been one of the aforementioned.

Ultimately, all of the hype surrounding what history shows to be an extraneous decision is yet another reflection of how unbearably long the Presidential election season has become. Before it's all said and done, the Presidential race will have gone on for an astounding 2 years. During the 730 some odd days from the commencement of the race to election day, there will inevitably by periods of down time. Said intervals must be filled with something in a 24/7 news cycle.

In that sense, the question of the VP is the same as "flag pin" gate or Obama's purported relationship with William Ayers. Like the latter, the VP search is mere filler which has no corporeal impact on who moves into the Oval Office in January.