How To Think About The Vice Presidential Process

When the laity looks at the vice presidential sweepstakes, we tend to misread the priorities of the process. For us, it's all politics.

But that's not the way that either John McCain or Barack Obama will choose their nominee.

We can't get into their heads, but we can be smart about how we assess their choices. Based on reporting, analysis and guess work, here's the best way to look at the next few months. First, try, as best you can, to put yourself in the shoes of the presidential candidate. It will occur to you that politics, alone, presents you with an array of palatable choices. How ever will you winnow the field? You might come to think of the process in two stages. There's the below the line stage -- the stage where you don the veil of self-awareness and answer questions that absolutely must be answered before you start to think about the politics. And then there's the above-the-line stage, where you're in front of the curtain, where politics matters more than anything.

Let's go below the line. One: the nuclear button test. Can the candidate be trusted to serve as president? This isn't necessarily a national security experience litmus test; obviously, in Obama's case, previous experience wasn't necessary for him to consider himself ready to be commander in chief, so there's no reason to think that, below the line, his answer to this question would require him to throw away a candidate who lacked national security experience. What's the compliment to national security experience? For both Obama and McCain, it's temperament: can this person do the job -- does he or she have the intestinal fortitude to serve?

Two: the trust test. This is a most difficult for any candidate to pass; can trust, if it does not exist, be built quickly? A series of internal questions: do I trust this person completely to serve my interests and the interests of the country? Was he or she there for me when it was risky for them to be there for me?

Assuming that a potential ticket-mate satisfies these two criteria, then and only then can a candidate consider politics; only then can the above-the-line evaluations begin. Even here, though, there's a caveat. We forget that, under Al Gore and Dick Cheney, the power of the vice presidential office has expanded significantly. A warm bucket of spit has been transformed into a cool quart of gin. What will the vice presidency be like in the Obama and McCain administrations? Probably, based on what these two men think of Dick Cheney and his influence over George W. Bush, much less of an equal and much more of a consiglieri.

Above the line, then, what political considerations are relevant? According to public reports, James Johnson's advice to Kerry was simple: once you've brought your potential nominees above the line, choose the person who would bring the most benefit to you politically. Johnson, along with Kerry friends like David Thorne, campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill and adviser Bob Shrum, helped Kerry figure out what type of political argument he wanted to make. Would it be geographic? (A candidate who could help mitigate losses in the South?) Would it be thematic? (A strong national security ticket with Bob Graham:? Would it be demographic? (Midwestern values: Dick Gephardt?) In the end, after apparently answering the below-the-line questions, Kerry chose John Edwards.

Did John Kerry follow this two-stage process when he bypassed Dick Gephardt and Bob Graham? Given what we now know, it's appropriate to ask: Did Kerry really trust Edwards? Or did he simply decide that the below-the-line questions were less relevant than the political imperatives of the time? Edwards has told associates that he thinks that Kerry never fully trusted him.