The Mittens Veepstakes

It's the silly season for the political press but Convention time is drawing closer and so the speculation about who Mittens will pick as his running mate is mounting and has now exploded courtesy of the Drudge Report's bombshell that former Secretary of State Condi Rice has snuck to the top of the list.

There's some indiciation that this might be wishful thinking- she's said she's not really that interested in the job but traditionally, would-be candidates for the role always say that. (And personally, I think you have to be kind of cracked in the head to want to run for President. Or be really rich. Or both. So if you don't want to do the job it's entirely likely you're going to be pretty decent at it.)

But let's say she's the one. Long term, it'd be a good move for Mittens and the GOPers because it'll get rid of the hangover from Sarah Palin in 2008. Condi Rice would be a serious candidate with serious foreign policy experience- something Mittens is a bit short on and the fact that she spent a lot of time butting heads with the neo-con cabal that dumped us to into Iraq and Afghanistan can only be seen as a plus to some people. The obvious downsides would be the lack of executive experience (she's never run for anything much less run anything) and her association with Bush The Younger. (Another hangover we're not quite recovered from as a nation.)

More plus sides, she's a woman, African-American and pro-choice- all of which could go some distance to helping Mittens get past the contraception and 'all Republicans hate women' mess that Santorum helped blow up in the primaries.

It's an interesting choice and it might be the shake-up the race needs and could be a more effective shake-up than Sarah Palin was for McCain in 2008.

Or... it could all be wishful thinking and Mittens could pick a white dude and go for the 'all vanilla, whitebread' ticket this fall. It should be interesting to watch- even though I'm not voting for the dude.

UPDATED: Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, so that part at the beginning of this post about how it's the silly season for political journalists right now. Totally true. The 'Condi Rice for VP' bubble is apparently not being well recieved in certain corners of the GOPer blogosphere.

Which brings us back to Veepage in general. By and large, you want an attack dog type that can bring more to the ticket somehow. People talk a lot about geography but that hasn't meant shit since JFK picked LBJ. People talk about picking Governors- but Romney was a Governor so he's got that covered. It's a tricky thing and it tells people a lot about what your priorities are. Which is why although Condi Rice would be interesting, I'd say budget maven Paul Ryan would be a strong pick. More vanilla picks like Tim Pawlenty and Rob Portman are possible and random dark horses like Kelly Ayotte or Brian Sandoval are also possibilities. At this point, nobody knows but Mittens.