By Shawn Zeller
Some Democrats hunger for a “dream ticket” of Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to maximize their chances of winning the presidency this fall, while many Republicans think a team of their remaining front-runners, John McCain and Mike Huckabee, might unite their party and allow it to hold the White House. If history and human nature are any guides, though, the chances are slim that either will happen and even narrower that it would succeed.
Only four times in the past half-century have rivals become running mates; only twice has it worked, and in neither case was it a great fit. In 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts tapped Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who had been a rival for the Democratic nomination. Once in office, Kennedy basically ignored Johnson. In 1980, former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California picked former party chairman George Bush, the runner-up in the GOP primaries. They got along better than Kennedy and Johnson, but Bush never really warmed to Reagan’s conservatism and often felt sidelined in the administration.
The two also-ran tickets were both Democratic: In 1956, Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois allowed the convention to choose a teammate, and the delegates picked the runner-up from the primaries, Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee; Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts did the same four years ago when he tapped Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
Even so, the dream ticket has a perennial appeal for two simple reasons, says Joel K. Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University and author of a book on the vice presidency: It brings together two leaders of the party who have become well-known to the electorate, and it creates at least an illusion of party unity. “The idea is to leave the convention as one big happy family ready to take on the other side,” Goldstein says.
So why doesn’t it happen more often? The political problems generally outweigh the public benefits – most important, the nominee’s historic desire to balance the ticket with someone from another region or ideology. “A lot of it depends on what kind of a dowry the vice presidential candidate brings to the ticket,” says vice presidential scholar Timothy Walch of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in Iowa. If a runner-up for the nomination doesn’t fit the bill, he probably doesn’t get the nod. And sometimes candidates can’t bury their mutual hostility from the campaign – or can’t imagine playing a subservient role to a rival.
All of which, these experts say, make the chances of a dream ticket this year somewhat dreamy. McCain, assuming he secures the nomination, might well look for a conservative Southern evangelical to shore up the GOP base. But he might decide he has a greater need for voters in traditionally Democratic states. Among Democrats, Clinton might want Obama, or vice versa, to solidify liberal strongholds in the North. But after a tough campaign, would either be willing to work for the other? “I think everybody would be somewhat happy with that ticket,” says Goldstein, “but the person at the top would be happier than the person at the bottom.”
