"My friends", unless you want to hear that phrase every day after next January 20, please hear this: The credentials of Obama's VP choice will have no effect on the election, because the VP's credentials have not ever been the reason why a presidential nominee won in November. The only two effects are the subjective effect that it has on the nominee's base and the media when it's announced, and what the choice says about the nominee.
Kathleen Sebelius is the only conceivable VP selection at this point who would both excite the Democratic grass roots and electrify the news media. (Selecting a woman VP did not have that effect in 1984, because Mondale had no chance to win, and Ferraro was plucked from obscurity in the House as a Hail Mary pass. But any woman that Obama picked might actually be one step away from the presidency.)
To those who ask if selecting a woman other than Hillary will alienate Hillaryites, I say this: Not if he announces the choice before Saturday of this week, because that will turn the next several days into the Coming of Kathleen. Striding together into Denver, they would be embraced by countless Democratic women politicians eager to be seen with them, praising Sebelius to the rafters. Hillary would have no choice but to join the chorus, because any damning by faint praise would be seen as focus on her own interests rather than the party's.
In contrast to the media frenzy that such a VP choice would create, Bayh, Biden, Kaine or any other traditional white male politician would entail no surprise and deliver no excitement; the sense of deflation would be palpable in less than two days. In what now looks like an unnecessarily close election from Democrats' perspective, and with a qualified progressive woman governor of a Republican state (with great media sparkle) available, any more conventional choice would contribute nothing to Obama's momentum.
He can't win this election by making safe choices and hedging his bets, or else he'll seem more conventional himself. Since returning from Berlin, Obama has frittered away the summer weeks as if he were expecting to saunter to victory in November. But that won't happen. In the first five months of this year, he raised the nation's expectations by unexpectedly capturing this nomination. He has to renew and meet those expectations with a bold VP selection that seems proportionate to the urgency of the stakes in this election. (And he will inoculate himself against an unfavorable comparison if, as seems likely now, John McCain springs his own surprise to great media effect when he announces his VP pick.)
There has not been such interest in the vicissitudes of a presidential campaign in American politics since 1992 or perhaps 1960. Obama needs to increase the tempo and not dampen it, if he's to retain the upper hand in this election.
