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It's hard to imagine Nancy Kassebaum playing second fiddle, even on a national ticket. The three-term Kansas Senator -- one of just two women in the upper house of Congress -- is famous for the independent streak that led her to oppose Ronald Reagan on school prayer, Star Wars and a balanced-budget amendment while supporting abortion rights and sanctions against South Africa. Despite powerful pressure from her own party, she was the only Republican to vote against George Bush's choice of John Tower to be his Secretary of Defense.
Perhaps she inherited her ornery side from her late father, Alf Landon, the 1936 Republican presidential candidate and longtime icon of Plains state Republicanism. Wherever it came from, her independence has helped make Kassebaum her state's most popular elected official -- take that, Robert Dole! -- while at the same time leaving the G.O.P. right wing deeply suspicious of her.
Her undoctrinaire conservatism could be just the thing, however, to help the G.O.P. attract suburban swing voters who may identify with the party on economics but are put off by the more strident right-wing positions on social questions like abortion rights. Kassebaum's unemphatic but unmistakable feminism could also help Bush close the gender gap by luring female voters away from the Democratic Party. Her recognized talent for building coalitions would make her an effective lobbyist for the Administration on Capitol Hill, which is one role that Vice Presidents customarily play.
Kassebaum is not the only prominent Republican woman whom Bush might consider. The short list could include U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills; former Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole; and Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin, a Bush favorite who helped him prepare for his 1984 vice-presidential debate against Geraldine Ferraro.
None of them, however, can boast the legislative experience and proven vote- getting ability of Kassebaum. But if Bush chooses the Kansas Senator, he should not expect a retiring running mate. After she was named deputy chair of the 1988 Republican National Convention, she passed up the opening night, preferring instead to attend a county fair in Abilene, Kans. As she pointedly told a Wichita newspaper, "I'm happy to speak on substantive issues. But to be treated as a bauble on the tree is not particularly constructive, is it?"
Where He Goes Dixie Follows?
If few Americans are familiar with the South Carolina Governor, the President knows him well. Bush included Carroll Campbell on his short list of vice- presidential possibilities in 1988. Since then, the 50-year-old Governor has only enhanced his image as a prime mover in the G.O.P. effort to push the South more firmly into the Republican column.
Campbell's political fortunes have been a bellwether of the Southern white voter shift away from the Democratic Party. In 1978 Campbell became the first Republican ever to be elected to Congress from his state's fourth district. Eight years later, when Democrats still outnumbered Republicans in the state legislature 6 to 1, he became just the second Republican to be elected Governor since Reconstruction. Though he squeaked by with 51% of the vote, he racked up 71% last November after a re-election campaign that pitted him against a black opponent, state senator Theo Mitchell.