With the fateful VP e-mail from Obama HQ likely to arrive at any minute now, here are my more or less final thoughts on the selection process

Is Evan Bayh really the best Obama can come up with?

by Ken

I have a feeling that the basic things I have to say about this whole vice presidential business are very much the same things you've been saying, starting with the basic question:

What the [expletive] is going on here?

I shudder even to run through the names. Sam Nunn? That egomaniacal homophobic right-wing hack? (And those are his better qualities.) Tim Kaine?? Ann Fergawdsakes Veneman???

For a while we were hearing the name of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who is still more conservative than I'd like and seems to be a soporific speaker (aren't we hoping for a candidate who can breathe some fire on the campaign trail?). But in this company, she seems like a giant.

And then of course -- no matter how much we may wish to duck him -- there's the inevitable, inescapable, and unspeakable Evan Bayh.

Evan Bayh???? Evan Bayh????? Evan Bayh??????

If you look up "empty suit" in the dictionary, you'll find Evan Bayh's picture there -- or you would if there were anything there to photograph. (You've probably heard Stephen Colbert's line from the other night, that he looks like the guy who came with the picture frame.) But no, our Evan is worse than an empty suit. He represents the New Generation of triangulating political sludge epitomized by the likes of DLC founder Al From and all-around superschmuck Holy Joe Lieberman. What little our Evan seems to have done tends to register in the negative column. Most notably, when George W. Bush and his band of war-mongering sociopaths were lying the country into the invasion of Iraq, our Evan didn't just vote for it. The drooling jackass cosponsored the resolution. An authentic do-nothing might be an upgrade.

Evan Bayh is, in other words, everything that's wrong with our political system short of actually being a Republican, which in many ways, looking at his voting record, he might as well be. Among DLC types, the technical term for this systematic betrayal of the people's interests is "bipartisanship." Holy Joe Lieberman fobs himself off as a prince of bipartisanship. But of course in the real world what they mean by "bipartisanship" is having the courage to do whatever those other guys want us to.

The true DLC-er has achieved Nirvana when he can lay claim to being almost as good a Republican as the wingnuttiest real Republican. The question these DLC types never seem to answer, or perhaps ask, is why anyone would vote for their version of crypto-Republicans when there's such an abundance of the genuine article to vote for?

But even that's old-school talk -- talk left over from the bad old days of 2000, 2002, 2004. Isn't 2008 supposed to be the year when it's virtual political death to be caught being a Republican in public? When those poor GOP sumbitches forced to run for reelection are running from their party as fast as their stumpy little legs will carry them?

There are people who hold it against our Evan that he's the son of a former U.S. senator from Indiana. They say our Evan has built his career on the mere fact of being his father's son.

As best I can tell, those people are right, of course, but I truly don't blame our Evan for being his father's son. What I blame him for is being a disgrace to the family name.

I have fond memories and especially a lot of fond feeling for Birch Bayh. Perhaps it had something to do with my being a recent transplant from the Midwest, in the advancing stages of early political consciousness, when he was elected to the Senate in 1962. John Kennedy was the still-new president, and while he wasn't getting all that much accomplished in Congress -- thanks to the obstruction of the immovable bloc of Dixiecrats, who still pretended to be Democrats -- still, it seemed that constructive change was possible. And even as things started going to hell with the assassination of the president, important progress was being made, and Bayh always seemed to me to be in the thick of it. Maybe not my political hero, exactly, but a supremely honorable political role model. Definitely one of the good guys.

To be honest, I've wondered over the years -- especially contemplating the grim nullity of the new-model Senator Bayh -- whether I've romanced the memory of the elder Bayh. Was he perhaps not the person I thought he was? I was young, after all, and perhaps easily impressed.

Even if I hadn't been too lazy to do the homework myself, I'm not sure I would have wanted to dig into Birch Bayh's record, for fear of what I might find. So I'm doubly grateful to my colleague Steve Clemons for doing the work for me. In a recent post on his blog, The Washington Note, Steve wrote:

Here's why I like Bayh the father so much and why he sets a standard for leadership that we should be comparing others to:

~ In 1962, narrowly won a Senate race in a big time red state against a Republican incumbent in 1962 through a "dynamic grassroots campaign"

~ helped draft and pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act

~ led the effort to defeat Nixon's appointment of two segregationist judges -- Clement Hanyesworth and Harrold Carswell -- to the Supreme Court

~ earned a place on the Nixon "enemies list" (I still am an avid fan, however, of Nixon's foreign policy -- and many of his domestic policies)

~ drafted and helped secure passage of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution establishing rules for presidential and vice-presidential succession

~ drafted and helped secure passage of the 26th Amendment lowering the voting age in the nation to 18 from 21 years of age

~ by drafting and passing two Amendments to the Constitution, Birch Bayh became the first American to author more than one amendment since the Founding Fathers

~ helped sponsor and nearly passed the Equal Rights Amendment that narrowly failed to secure ratification by the states

~ authored and helped secure passage of Title IX of the Higher Education Act that prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender in the classroom and athletic field

~ authored the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)

~ He was a co-author of the Bayh-Dole Act which allowed US universities, small businesses, and non-profit organizations to retain intellectual property rights of inventions developed from federal government-funded research -- probably one of the most significant triggers of new university-based innovation in US history

~ after leaving the Senate, served as Founding Chairman of the Institute Against Prejudice and Violence, which laid the original ground work for hate-crimes legislation that eventually became law

~ and today serves on the Advisory Board and is working hard to get states to pass legislation that would bind their electoral college votes to the outcomes of the national popular vote. In other words, Bayh is trying to make individual votes matter and is attempting to neutralize the electoral college

Of course I'm sharing this material and reminding people of Birch Bayh's leadership in part because his son, Senator Evan Bayh, might be the next Vice President. Others might end up in that spot either with Obama -- or, alternative, John McCain may win which means a different cast could be up for Cheney's newly crafted VP perks.

But Evan Bayh's father sculpted a pattern of principled leadership in the Senate that should be noted -- and it's the kind of results he achieved that are what should be saluted and what Obama, McCain, Evan Bayh, Kaine, Sibelius, Pawlenty, Biden, Hagel and others should be measured against.

Steve explains that he had a chance to interact with Birch Bayh (who turned 80 this past January) over the last year when Steve helped moderate a series of four Senate Colloquies at Washington College with Bayh and former Senators Gary Hart (D-CO), Paul Laxalt (R-NV), and Dale Bumpers (D-AR) and current Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN).

"My role was to keep the sessions moving and to provoke discussion and responses," Steve writes, "but it was Birch Bayh who provided the foundation for these discussions because of his own love for the legislative machinery of government and his mastery of policy and political success -- even when the cards were frequently stacked against him and the causes he fought for."

Now one thing we can't say, at least not casually, is that Birch Bayh proved that it's possible to maintain liberal principles in a conservative state and still be not only elected but reelected. Well, he did, up to a point -- he did serve three terms in the Senate. But it's not as if he retired. He lost his bid for reelection in the Reagan landslide year of 1980. And he was defeated by, of all people, Dan Quayle, a primitive humanoid life form who makes Birch's boy Evan look, comparatively, merely empty-suit-ish.

Still, Birch Bayh served those 18 years in the Senate with distinction. And when he went down, he went down with his principles more or less whole. What, after all, would be the point of continuing to be reelected if there was, well, no point in being reelected? Has political principle become that disposable? And even after Bayh was defeated, as Steve Clemons notes, he found ways of continuing to serve the public interest.

I've heard it suggested that Senator Obama is considering the wrong Bayh for his running mate. I've also heard it suggested that Evan Bayh would make a more appropriate running for mate for Obama's GOP opponent, Young Johnny McCranky. What can I say? You hear things. And speaking of things you hear, isn't our Evan supposed to have been at or near the top of Hillary Clinton's VP list too? What is it with these people?

But one thing I know: When I and a whole lot of people I know or merely encounter online have the identical response to the recent talk that the pride of Delaware, Sen. Joe Biden, is suddenly hot 'n' heavy in the Obama VP mix, namely that he doesn't sound half bad, you know we've been conditioned to some painfully low expectations.

In the end, it may not matter much. In regard to his vice presidential powers as in so many other respects, "Big Dick" Cheney is, mercifully, an aberration. It seems pretty certain that we'll never have another VP like that. (A lot more certain than that we'll never have another president like our Chimpy the Prez.) Is Young Johnny that much better?) In reality, the VP has exactly as much policy influence as the president wants him to. It's still the president's show.

I don't even believe that the running mate helps the presidential candidate win states he might not otherwise. It just doesn't happen. People simply don't vote for a vice president. They may well vote against a vice presidential nominee, however, and that's normally the top guy's principal concern: to find someone who doesn't cost him votes.

It is true, though, that the choice tells us something about the chooser -- about both his politics and his character. The VP does, after all, have to be prepared to step into the top job, and while it's understandable that a presidential candidate doesn't want to be overshadowed by his running mate, just as a president can't allow himself to be overshadowed by his vice president (again, the example of the aberrant Cheney-Bush regime doesn't apply), we can fairly ask whether the presidential candidate is offering us someone worthy of the office.

I still cling to the hope that all the talk we've been hearing about Democratic vice presidential possibilities is a smokescreen, that the very fact that these people are being talked about so much publicly is a giveaway that they're really not being seriously considered privately. I have to cling to that hope, because otherwise I have to wonder: Are the people who we're told have been receiving serious consideration by the Obama team not the sorriest damned bunch of nobodies in tarnation?

The Democratic talent pool isn't that shallow. I still don't know why retired Gen. Wes Clark isn't being considered. And there are interesting governors in addition to Governor Sebelius, like Ted Strickland of Ohio [right] and Brian Schweitzer of Montana. For that matter, there's always Hillary, whom a lot of primary voters judged to be of presidential caliber.

But when we sigh a collective sigh of relief at the thought of friggin' Joe Biden, you know that we've been conditioned to set our sights really, really low.


UPDATE: HELP OBAMA SELECT HIS RUNNING MATE

Firedoglake is running a poll today. Wes Clark is way out ahead-- but Hillary isn't doing badly. Bayh... well even Republican Chuck Hagel has more votes than he does. Currently he's tied with elderly Dixiecrat Sam Nunn. -- Howie

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