A Campaign Treading Water
Jules Witcover

After all the public hand-wringing over when, if ever, Mitt Romney would clinch the Republican presidential nomination, here we are, about three months before the two national party conventions, essentially marking time in place.

It's like the long interlude in World War II after the 1939 Nazi blitzkrieg of Poland and before the onslaught on the Low Countries and France in 1940. The Republican and Democratic candidates are mainly consolidating their resources and testing their oratorical weapons for the big clash that traditionally starts in earnest on Labor Day.

It's true that both Romney and President Obama are venturing onto the campaign trail trying out their themes, while trying to avoid the inevitable potholes in the road that probably will have been forgotten by election day.

Who will be voting then against Romney because he is alleged now to have hazed a prep school classmate for dying his hair blond? And who will be rejecting Obama then because he allegedly had to be pushed now into coming out in support of same-sex marriage?

The likely determinant of the election's outcome will be the state of the economy in early November. It will be measured by most voters in terms of the unemployment rate then and the public perception of what Obama has or has not done to put America's jobless and underemployed back to living-wage work.

Although Labor Department statistics suggest a slow and painful recovery, it has not been nearly enough to support Obama's cheerleading that the trend is in the right direction. And the latest news of JP Morgan's huge financial loss, while underscoring the validity of the Dodd-Frank regulatory reforms of Wall Street's dealing practices, is further shaking public confidence.

So in a real sense, this year's presidential campaign is a captive of the economic climate, and it will take more than Romney's schoolboy antics and Obama's tentative reassurances to tip the scale one way or the other.

As we head into late spring and summer ahead, more attention is being paid to the one question that customarily draws the interest of voters and armchair campaign managers at this time: Who will be the running mates?

Although the president has already indicated that Vice President Joe Biden will be on the Democratic ticket with him, fantasy politics players continue to mumble about replacing him with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, despite her flat disavowal of interest or willingness. If Obama had wanted to show his vice president the door, Biden's volunteering of his support for same-sex marriage, pre-empting Obama on the matter, would have been the opportunity to give him the heave-ho. But it caused nary a ripple from the Oval Office.

Among the Republicans, however, a genuine sifting through the tea leaves is going on over which of the available GOP worthies will get Romney's nod as his ticket mate. Many voters are still in doubt about this fellow from Massachusetts of harsh and "severely conservative" words but bland demeanor. So his choice of a running mate can be a window not so much on his soul as on his sense of responsibility to his party and country.

It is, indeed, the first serious decision a presidential nominee is called on to make, and it has not always been made in a way to give credit to the maker. With nearly one-third of all American presidents having first been a vice president, and eight having achieved it via constitutional succession, the call is no laughing matter. This is so despite all the guffaws that only four years ago greeted John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin of Alaska.

The nominees always say they are looking for the person "most qualified to be president." Romney has an opportunity during the current lull to enhance his own qualifications for president, by not similarly making a joke out of his selection of the individual to whom the heavy responsibilities of the presidency could pass, if destiny were to so dictate. And voters should take how he addresses this decision into consideration when casting their ballots in November.

 

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A Campaign Treading Water | Politics

 

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