Needlenose

The New York Times today ran another potential Obama-veep nominee up the media flagpole (the one specifically reserved for trial balloons), describing Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana as:

… a telegenic moderate Democrat, a father of twins entering their teens, an experienced politician who in 2006 briefly flirted with a presidential run before endorsing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. The son of a senator, Mr. Bayh was a popular two-term governor who could make Indiana, typically rock-solid Republican in presidential contests, a competitive state and appeal to blue-collar Democrats who have been slow to embrace Mr. Obama.

Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of politics-as-usual, ticket-balancing approach that would undercut Obama’s message of offering a new approach. And there’s a worse problem:

Mr. Bayh’s support of authorizing force in Iraq stands in sharp contrast to Mr. Obama’s oft-stated view that he showed the good judgment to oppose the conflict from the start. After his vote, Mr. Bayh in early 2003 joined Mr. McCain as an honorary co-chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which made regime change in Iraq its central cause.

“He was not only wrong, he was aggressively wrong,” said Tom Andrews, national director of the Win Without War coalition, referring to Mr. Bayh. “In my view, he would contradict if not undermine the Obama message of change, turning a new page on foreign policy and national security.”

Damn straight. The most important qualification for a VP — as we always hear presidential nominees say, and as Obama in particular should mean given his not-politics-as-usual message — is that he or she be a good choice to become President if the need arises.

For Obama to say his judgment in opposing the Iraq war is proof that he’s qualified to be commander-in-chief, and then to say that the best second choice is someone whose judgment went in the exact opposite direction, is shooting himself in the foot (or, arguably, a more vital organ).

(P.S. I actually don’t think Obama’s going to pick Bayh. My thoroughly uninformed hunch is that it will be this guy, who opposed the Iraq war… but also served in the 82nd Airborne.)

“Hmm, I wonder if Fafblog is right about that hidden portrait…”

(Evan Bayh and Barack Obama in Indiana on Wednesday, via the Associated Press.)