Needlenose

Yesterday, Dan Balz wrote for the Washington Post:

This is Veep Week. That, in reality, is about all that anyone outside Sen. Barack Obama’s inner, inner circle knows — that sometime before next week the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee will announce his running mate. Beyond that, the political world is in a zone of fevered speculation. . . .

As Obama completed his Hawaii vacation, there was a widespread assumption, based on nothing solid from the campaign, that he could make his announcement early this week and stage a multi-day rollout. Now, in a twist that goes against recent history, there are signs that Obama may wait to announce his choice until this weekend or just before in hopes of providing a big boost before the convention opens Monday in Denver.

There’s a simple reason for Obama not having an extended look-here’s my-VP rollout –if you look the list of likely suspects, there simply isn’t anyone (save the apparently unlikely Hillary Clinton) who would merit any degree of hype. For better or worse, it’s an unexciting bunch.

In any event, despite the excellent chance of being proven wrong within minutes of posting this, I’d like to go ahead and flesh out the longshot hunch I floated last week that Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island will be announced later this week as Obama’s pick for vice president.

First, though, I ought to acknowledge the main reason he’s not considered a front-runner — seemingly outright denials like this one in a Rhode Island paper three weeks ago:

Reed was asked in an interview Friday afternoon: “If you were offered this position you would decline, is that correct?”

“Yeah,” he answered, “but frankly I don’t expect to be offered the position.” Reed added, “I want to continue to be a legislator.” Reed said, further, that he has not been asked by the Obama campaign to answer questionnaires, put investigators in touch with accountants, or take other such steps necessary for checking the background of a vice-presidential prospect. That fact, Reed said, makes his point that a slot on Obama’s ticket “is not an offer that I will have to refuse.”

Reed, a comparatively little-known senator outside Washington, is widely known inside the Capitol as an experienced hand on defense and foreign policy issues. He went to West Point, served as an officer in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and is a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. On that basis, some pundits speculated early in this year’s Democratic nominating contest that Reed might be a good running mate for Illinois Democrat Obama, should he win the party’s nomination.

But Reed issued an almost Shermanesque declaration of non-interest in the vice presidency in February. “I have no intention to seek it,” he said of the second position on a Democratic ticket, “or even, if offered it, to accept.”

Asked Friday whether he stands by that statement now, Reed said, “I’m exactly where I was six months ago and probably a year — long before it was obvious that Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee.”

So why do I think that Reed has a revisionist statement like “I turned him down, but he persisted” in his future? Well, let’s look at some of the less-remarked-upon parts of what Obama himself said about his pick yesterday:

I want somebody who has integrity, who’s in politics for the right reasons . . . who shares with me a passion to make the lives of the American people better than they are right now. I want someone who is not in it just because they want to have their name up in lights or end up being president. I want somebody who is mad right now, that people are losing their jobs. And is mad right now that people have seen their incomes decline, and want to rebuild the middle class in this country. That’s the kind of person that I want; somebody who in their gut knows where they came from and believes that we have to grow this country from the bottom up.

Now, let’s take a look at Reed’s official Senate biography:

Throughout his career in the United States Congress, Jack Reed has been an advocate for working-class families. . . .

. . . In June of 2008 the New York Times noted: “Mr. Reed has had a passion for housing issues throughout his career. Beginning in the early 1980s when, as a young lawyer, he did pro bono work for Amos House, a Providence soup kitchen and social service agency, and continuing after his election to the Rhode Island Assembly, the House and finally the Senate.”

Recently, he co-authored legislation to create a new affordable housing trust fund, improve consumer disclosures on mortgages, and address the needs of middle-class families who are struggling with the fallout from the housing crisis.

Jack Reed was born and raised in Cranston, Rhode Island. His father, Joe, was a World War II veteran and Cranston school janitor who worked his way up to become custodial supervisor of the city’s school system.

That humble, service-focused background sounds kind of compatible with that of a certain Democratic presidential nominee, doesn’t it? And then there’s that whole West Point-82nd Airborne pedigree, combined with Reed’s opposition to the Iraq war and expertise on foreign policy. The guy’s resumé is just plain perfect.

Yes, picking him might cost the Democrats a Senate seat, but that appears to be the case for several of the top candidates, so it’s a bullet Obama may well have to bite in any event. (Just like it’s not such a red flag that he claims not to have been “vetted,” since like the other senators on the short list he’s had to file financial disclosures for years.) And he may not be as effective an attack dog as Joe Biden or Jim Webb, but that also reduces the risk that Obama will be hammered for something (supposedly) offensive that his veep pick says.

In fact, I suspect his modesty and ability to deflect attention is a plus in Obama’s book. And on top of everything else, as if to underscore the value of his expertise, background, and temperament, “Obama/Reed” sounds grounded in a way that “Obama/Biden,” “Obama/Kaine,” or (heaven forbid) “Obama/Bayh” don’t.

So maybe that’s real reason for my hunch. Jack Reed for VP… because Barack Obama needs a guy with a mainstream-sounding name on his team! Good enough to base a wild guess on, if you ask me.

Update 1: Newsweek’s Howard Fineman makes the case for it being Joe Biden, who’s my fallback guess (and was my first hunch back in January).

Update 2: (8/21) As so often occurs, Swopa leads, and the pundits follow — in this case, neocrook Bill Kristol and the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn saw the same hints I did in Obama’s remarks.

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.)

From the Washington Post this evening:

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has told close associates that he has had “very serious” conversations with Sen. Barack Obama about joining the Democratic presidential ticket and has provided documents to the campaign as it combs through his background, according to several sources close to Kaine.

. . . Aides to Kaine declined to comment about the possibility that Obama might pick him, referring all questions to the senator’s campaign. “The governor has been pretty clear from the beginning, when Senator Obama asked him to be a national co-chair, that any conversation he has with the campaign, on any topic, are conversations that he is keeping private,” said Delacey Skinner, Kaine’s spokeswoman.

But several people who have spoken to Kaine said he has talked about the seriousness of the possibility. Each spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the campaign’s desire to keep the process secret. One said Kaine has stressed that there are other top candidates but described his discussions with the campaign as “very serious.”

Two other associates said Kaine’s staff is providing the background information necessary to allow the campaign to search for potential political land mines. One source said Kaine chief counsel Larry Roberts is coordinating with Obama’s team.

You have to wonder whether, somewhere, an Obama aide is putting a big black “X” next to Kaine’s name with the note, “Can’t keep his f—ing mouth shut”…