A Jan. 14 Outlook article by Lanny J. Davis incorrectly said that President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated less than a month after his second inauguration. The interval was six weeks. Also, the article said that the Constitution prohibits a ticket with a presidential and vice presidential candidate from the same state. There is no such prohibition.
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McCain-Clinton '08? Obama-Hagel? That's the Ticket
There are any number of provocative possibilities for a bipartisan ticket in 2008. Imagine the buzz if Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton committed to making the other vice president in the event that either won the election. Pick any combination of other names in the current field of potential candidates: Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Chuck Hagel; Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Republican Mitt Romney; Democrat John Edwards and Republican Michael Bloomberg; Democrat Bill Richardson and Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani. Any of these bipartisan pairings, in any permutation, would create a stir -- and a dynamite ticket. (Okay, strike one possible combination -- there's no way we'll see a Clinton-Giuliani ticket, or vice versa; not only does the Constitution forbid it, as they're both from the same state, but their personal chemistry would preclude it, too.)
Will it happen? In the end, political realism will be the determining factor. If it appears that a bipartisan ticket could enhance the chances of victory, and if any party leader embraces the need to make this a reality for the country's sake, then yes, it's likely to happen.
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You don't have to go back 143 years to Abraham Lincoln for an example of such a judgment. Less than three years ago, Democrat John F. Kerry reportedly saw the political wisdom in asking McCain to be his vice presidential candidate, even though he knew the idea would be vehemently opposed by the Democratic Party's liberal base, which disagreed with McCain's positions on abortion, the Iraq war and other issues. Though McCain declined the invitation, it seems evident in hindsight that a Kerry-McCain ticket would have had a better chance of picking up an extra state (or turning 75,000 votes in Ohio) to win the 2004 election.
And whether or not either party takes the dramatic step of committing to a bipartisan ticket, there could be one nonetheless. A well-funded group of national political experts from both parties called "Unity '08," led by Republican pollster Douglas Bailey and former Democratic presidential aide Hamilton Jordan, is ready to fill the void and run a third, bipartisan ticket that would be nominated online through a virtual convention.
But I'm betting that such a third ticket won't be necessary, because eitherDemocrats or Republicans -- or both -- will nominate a bipartisan ticket in 2008 or commit to a bipartisan presidency after the election. And I'll wager that if only one of the parties does it, that party will win.
Any takers?
Lanny J. Davis, special counsel to President Bill Clinton from 1996 to 1998, is the author of "Scandal: How 'Gotcha' Politics Is Destroying America" (Palgrave Macmillan).
