Choosing a US running mate is a bit like choosing a wife and the Democratic family fell in love with Edwards during the primaries, writes Elaine Kamarck.
A few years ago journalist and author Joe Klein wrote a novel called The Running Mate. Ostensibly about a politician in a presidential race, it turns out to be about a politician finding a wife - hence the double meaning in the title.
After all, choosing a running mate is a bit like choosing a wife and you've got to hand it to John Kerry - the Massachusetts senator has been pretty smart when it comes to choosing wives. Both women were good-looking and rich. And so it's not surprising that in choosing John Edwards as his running mate, candidate Kerry chose well.
For instance, no one wants an ugly wife - or husband, for that matter - if they can help it. And of the contenders John Edwards, with his boyish face and silky hair, was easily the trophy wife - the best looking candidate in the field. In addition, men and women can't help compare their mate to the other mates. So let me ask the women readers: Whom would you rather bring back to your college reunion - Senator John Edwards, the doll, or Vice President Dick Cheney, the lump? Enough said on that score.
Secondly, no one wants a wife - or husband - with a sour personality. Kerry suffers from a lack of charisma. He's the sort of candidate who needs to be reminded to smile. Not Edwards. He ran the most unabashedly optimistic campaign of the primary season. He positively bounds through crowds of admirers. He's been called the best campaigner since Bill Clinton. He is bound to brighten up Kerry. Meanwhile, Cheney's campaign style has been likened to a man in a grocery store. Whom would you rather drink a beer with?
And speaking of charisma, no one really wants a mate whom the family dislikes. John McCain, had he agreed to run with Kerry, would have been disliked by large portions of the Democratic family. In fact, he might very well have been so disliked - he was, after all, a Republican - that he might not have made it to the altar. It would have been marrying outside the faith.
In contrast, the Democratic family fell in love with Edwards during the primaries - so much so that people were heard to say they were voting for him for vice-president. In recent polls of Democratic voters, Edwards was favoured over the next contender - Representative Richard Gephardt of Missouri - by 8 percentage points.
Social class is important in a marriage, too. Bush and Cheney are from the same social class - really rich and pretty rich. But since most Americans aren't even a little bit rich, being rich tends to be a problem in presidential elections. And so, aristocratic Kerry (pretty rich) and his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry (really, really, really rich) needed Edwards, son of a mill worker and a person who grew up pretty poor and never fails to remind voters of his humble roots.
But can the spouse keep house? As more wives have gone to work, housekeeping has fallen into disrepute, along with other traditionally wifely skills such as cooking. But in the end someone has to run the house, even if that means going out to pick up the take-out food. When it comes down to it, the reason to have a vice-president is to have someone take over and run the White House should something happen to the president.
Four years ago, when Edwards was under consideration to be Al Gore's running mate, he had only been in the Senate for two years and had held no previous governmental posts. He was just too green to be "a heartbeat away".
But Edwards is four years older and much wiser. He's been in the middle of the 9/11 investigations in the Senate, he's been around the world, he's been all over America and he's impressed everyone with his intellect. And although his trial lawyer experience isn't exactly government experience, good trial lawyers know how to make a case. Edwards will make the case against Bush-Cheney and for Kerry better than anyone else who was under consideration. What more could you want from a running mate? - (Los Angeles Times-Washington Post Service )
• Elaine Kamarck, a lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, served in the Clinton administration