In a series of careful timed-release leaks, Donald Trump has now revealed what we are led to believe is his list of vice-presidential prospects. Not one of those names registers as a worthy choice.
Granted, the bar has been raised this year. At the beginning of every cycle, the vice-presidential choice becomes, overnight, the leading presidential candidate for the next cycle. Think Nixon and Johnson, Bush and Biden, not to mention Mondale and Gore. But this year — with the GOP presidential nominee limited, constitutionally, to one term and, actuarially, to a brief working life — it is highly likely that the vice-presidential pick will become the presidential pick sometime in the next four years.
Thus the gravity of Trump’s choice. And thus the disappointment in his list of prospects.
The threshold question for selecting a running mate should be this one: Would this man or woman be fit to serve in my absence as president of the United States?
Of the junior congresspeople on Trump’s list — Elise Stefanik, Byron Donalds, Tulsi Gabbard — we can say that, while all of them are bright and telegenic, not one of them is prepared to lead a beleaguered America in this moment of historic global change: hegemonic struggle, winner-take-most economic conflict, shooting wars.
Of Vivek Ramaswamy, we can say that his is a fine American story — he seems to have made the better part of a billion dollars by not discovering miracle cures for life-threatening disease — but, at 38, he’s not ready to lead what’s left of the free world.
We then come to that mother of vice presidents, the Dakotas. To the South, Governor Kristi Noem has recently faded from consideration. (In the assessment of a political friend from Rapid City, for what it’s worth, she would have faded for other reasons had she not offed the family dog.) To the North, Governor Doug Burgum is so new to national politics that he poses a vetting (and defining) nightmare.
With the senators — Vance, Rubio, and Scott — there are three different problems, all of them large and none of them quickly soluble. Vance is 39, only 18 months into a political career in the first chapter of which he was an acerbic Trump critic; in the second, an arm-jerk supporter. Vance is thoughtful and ambitious, but a bit of seasoning is in order. Rubio is smart and attractive and Hispanic, but he is still boyishly enthusiastic about new ideas even when they conflict with ideas he strongly held only weeks earlier. A politician’s basic philosophical approach cannot be assumed to settle after he moves to the White House. And Tim Scott. A wonderful man. I overlapped with him in Washington for more than a decade, and, during those years, I never ran across anybody who either disliked him or thought he should be president.
I cannot trace the tenth name on Trump’s short list back to the leaker in chief, Susie Wiles, so it may be unofficial. But his name is out there: Ben Carson. He is a distinguished Yale alumnus, a gifted doctor, a great American, and, I feel safe in saying, the only product of the Detroit projects to later head the neurosurgery department at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Dr. Carson is not just brilliant. He’s self-aware, and he would be the first to note that he is ill-equipped to handle challenges thrown at an untested commander in chief by an increasingly hostile world.
The short list is too short. The minute Trump announced his selection of any one of these ten prospects, the threshold question in the big offices in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang would be this one: Is he (or she) a patsy? And the answer would be yes.
These are dangerous days. What the country needs is a vice president who is deeply versed in the arcane fields of diplomacy, intelligence, and military affairs. What the country needs is a vice president who is good to go today.
Those criteria make the case for West Point graduate and former congressman, CIA director, and secretary of state Mike Pompeo. He has worked with Trump before — quietly and effectively — which means that he knows how to navigate the political battlefield, as well.
In addition to the threshold question, conventional analysis has added a bonus question in the selection of a running mate: Would this man or woman help win the election? Manifestly, none of the short-list prospects would do so, even if one or more of them might help lose a blue state by a point fewer or win a red state by a point more.
Who might help Trump win? I would like to see polls on Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia and former governor Doug Ducey in Arizona. Could they carry their home states for Trump? I doubt that they could make the critical difference, but if they could, they should be vetted under the terms of the threshold question. They both have adult-level professional and political experience.
The obvious prospect is Nikki Haley. She has a national profile, a working knowledge of foreign policy, state-level executive experience, and, like Pompeo, survival skills honed during a tour in the first Trump administration. The problem is that she ran against Trump; she made a salty case against him, and he has, at least for personal slights, an elephantine memory. If Haley is the choice, we can conclude that Susie Wiles is as deft as she’s cracked up to be.
My own view is that Pompeo would help Trump win and not because he could carry Kansas for the GOP. His selection would tell us that Trump understands the magnitude of America’s challenge and that he is prepared to act responsibly to meet it.