Running Mate Fun

The question of who Barack Obama’s running mate will be has dominated political discussion for days. Obama was supposed to announce his pick Thursday—but didn’t, since he felt that John McCain’s “house counting” gaffe was such a winning issue that announcing his choice would only be a distraction. Then he was supposed to announce Friday—but didn’t, though he promised that he had made his choice. For a while, Evan Bayh was supposed to be the running mate, then Obama told both Bayh and Virginia governor Tim Kaine that they would not be picked. Now, a text message announcing the pick will, supposedly, come out in the morning. And since the other two frontrunners have been eliminated, it seems that the pick will be Joe Biden. (I certainly hope so, otherwise this post will be irrelevant). Whatever his choice, Obama will appear with his running mate at a rally in Springfield, Illinois tomorrow.

Obama has gotten some good publicity from all this—for the last few days, I’ve been checking Drudge constantly to see if he decided. I think that many others have too, and it’s been the big story this week. But Obama doesn’t seem to quite realize the consequences—he will now have to announce that his pick is (probably) Joe Biden—on Saturday morning. There are many people who pay little attention to the news on weekends—which means that some people won’t hear about the decision till Monday. And while Joe Biden, I suppose, shored up Obama’s foreign policy credentials, it’s hard to see how he was worth all the build-up. The situation is a bit like the Star Wars prequels—great marketing, but the results were disappointing.