"I am a god in nature," Emerson wrote. "I am a weed by the wall."
That is a good description of a presidential ticket — or of what becomes of the presidential ticket, once elected.
It will soon be time for Al Gore and George Bush — the two gods-in-nature of this election year, such as they are — to choose their weeds by the wall, their insignificant others. July may be designated Vice Presidential Speculation Month.
Running mates come in three basic models, differentiated by generation:
a) The Gabby Hayes-Cactus Jack: A reasonably plausible geezer, older than the presidential candidate — comparable to what you have when you put one of your slightly balding tires in the trunk as a spare. Sixty-eight-year-old Pete Domenici of New Mexico has been mentioned as a possible George Bush spare, for example. Truman did it with Alben Barkley in 1948.
b) The body double: Clinton selected Gore — a vice president of the same generation, even the same region of the country, a sort of sibling.
c) The bright young (comparative) unknown: George Bush the elder selected Dan Quayle; Eisenhower chose the young Dick Nixon.
There are other and newer considerations. For example: Hormonal balance (it did not work in 1984 with Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro...but that was then), and star quality (either party would go to almost any length to get Colin Powell).
Does the vice presidential part of the ticket really matter? Franklin Roosevelt chose his vice presidents for reasons of practical politics, with an (ultimately misplaced) confidence in his own immortality. Thus John Nance ("Cactus Jack") Garner signed on because F.D.R. needed the Texas delegation's votes at the 1932 convention. (Garner turned into an irascibly seditious anti-Roosevelt; at cabinet meetings, Roosevelt would say, "We can talk today — the Vice President isn't here." He ran against Roosevelt in the 1940 convention and was replaced by Henry Wallace.)
The strange metaphysics of the vice presidency (a nothing who may, in a heartbeat, become everything) give the office (and the vice presidential nominee) a sleight-of-hand quality. Now you focus on him (her). Now you don't. The choice may say something about the presidential candidate. Or it may not, if you see what I mean. What did the selection of Lyndon Johnson in 1960 tell us except that the Kennedys weren't getting enough sleep? (They didn't really want L.B.J., and were shocked when he accepted.)
Geography hardly matters anymore. Religion does, a bit. The selection of running mates, a pseudo-scientific calculation, does engage an instinct for political chemistry and physics — chemistry, because that is what is supposed to result, vividly, when you combine the two candidates; and physics, such that the gravitas of Number 2 may not exceed the gravitas of Number 1 (exception: see "Colin Powell," above).
Considering the chemical reaction that the tickets may have on voters, my hunches for the best combinations are as follows:
I doubt very much that either Kerrey or Whitman will be in the race this year. I simply say they would be the running mates who would bring the most to each ticket. Kerrey and Whitman may offend the faithful on either side, and may for that reason be unchoosable; but Whitman and Kerrey would bring some attractive magic to the middle ranges of the electorate, among the independents who will decide the election.
Kerrey and Gore would have to compose earlier differences — on Social Security reform, for example, and on that ugly business about some of Gore's people in New Hampshire supposedly kicking mud on Kerrey and calling him "a cripple." But in politics, antipathies may be temporary. Once in 1990 I sat in Senator Al Gore's office in Washington and asked him what he thought of Bill Clinton of Arkansas. Gore sneered: "Clinton hasn't got a clue." Kerrey, a lighter, funnier, and infinitely more authentic man than Gore — and a war hero, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor in Vietnam — would bring a certain connectedness and humanity to the ticket, and would serve as a foil to distract attention from Gore's Stepford quality. The two could even play it for endearingly comic effect.
Christie Todd Whitman, of course, is pro-choice and Eastern Republican. She springs from the same Eastern WASP aristocracy that produced Bush. But those facts do not hurt with independents. The chemistry of the Bush-Whitman ticket could be winning. The choice of Whitman for the Bush ticket would have no taint of the condescending gender-pander; an Al Gore-Diane Feinstein ticket, by contrast, would merely seem the crowning insincerity.
The prospect, in any case, of a presidential race in the year 2000 with four middle-aged white males seems a little disspiriting, and retrograde.