By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 30, 2008; 10:40 AM

The floodgates are now officially open.

The low rumble of veepstakes chatter is now a deafening roar, and no self-respecting, self-appointed or self-important pundit dares stay on the sidelines.

Yesterday's Politico and Washington Post reports that Obama is getting serious about Tim Kaine, along with Evan Bayh and Joe Biden, has kicked the quadrennial ritual into high gear. Never mind that journalists have an abysmal track record of handicapping these things and missing the person who winds up getting picked. (Two words: Dick Cheney.)

What, you think we'd rather write about George Bush leaving his successor a record $482-billion deficit? That, of course, is far more important to whatever the next president can accomplish. But a heckuva lot less fun.

What I love about this orgy of pontification is how everyone becomes an instant expert. People whose only experience in Virginia is flying into Reagan National Airport suddenly are holding forth on the intricacies of the governor's record.

If someone like Kaine does get picked, he will of course get picked over by hundreds of journalists and thousands of bloggers. But since most of these wannabes are passed over, the frisking amounts to just a passing thunderstorm that can nonetheless leave them pretty soggy.

This is the season for the pundits to pose as campaign managers, decreeing who will help or hurt the ticket, when that is a crapshoot at best. And when the hoopla dies down, the No. 2 doesn't usually have much impact on the race.

But the importance--aside from the fact that a vice president might well inherit the top job--is in showing the country how a candidate makes his first presidential-level decision. And on that score, for the moment at least, we know very little.

Kaine remains in "it's flattering to be mentioned" mode. And, the Washington Times reports, "Mr. Kaine also said differences that he has with Mr. Obama, such as the politicians' respective stances on abortion, 'can be a strength.' Mr. Obama is pro-choice. And Mr. Kaine says that as a Catholic, he is 'personally pro-life' but does not think doctors or women who receive abortions should be criminalized."

The Boston Globe asks, what's the rush? "Some analysts now say McCain might gain more of an advantage by waiting until the last possible moment. Obama must announce his pick by the time of the Democratic convention during the last week of August. McCain can wait until the following week, when the Republican convention is held."

Townhall's Amanda Carpenter disses the leaked Democratic possibilities:

"Evan Bayh: Too young, too inexperienced to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

"Joe Biden: Most likely to say something on October 30 that will blow it for Obama.

"Tim Kaine: Massive eyebrow problems. Sort of creepy. I live in Virginia and can't think of anything notable he has done.

"Kathleen Sebelius: Will outrage all the Hillary [Clinton] people because Obama picked a woman other than Hillary."

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey says the choice of Kaine has a couple of positives:

"It puts someone with executive experience on the ticket. Maybe most importantly, it puts Virginia into play for the Democrats, who need to turn a significant red state blue -- and Virginia is probably the most likely to switch.

"On the other hand, Kaine has some serious drawbacks. Other than being governor for three years, Kaine doesn't have much on the resumé. He has no foreign-policy experience, and no military experience, either. And as the Post mentions in its profile, Kaine hasn't exactly set the world on fire in Virginia. Three years without any significant accomplishments will not generate excitement for this running mate, and then there's the inconvenient matter of the budget deficit."

On the liberal side, it's safe to list Open Left's Matt Stoller as a non-fan:

"He signed an estate tax repeal Mark Warner vetoed and tried to push through a sales tax hike. He's also horrible on global warming and coal, oh, and he's pro-life. Awesome."

Carpetbagger's Steve Benen offers a more mixed verdict:

"Kaine is perhaps best known for being a deeply-religious Roman Catholic . . .

"In this sense, Kaine would reinforce Obama's qualities -- they're both young, smart, committed Christians, who don't much care for the traditional ways of doing things in Washington.

"What are the downsides? For one thing, there would be plenty of questions about Kaine's experience in government. He's worked his way up the ladder -- four years as the mayor of Richmond, four years as Virginia's lieutenant governor, and two-and-a-half years as governor -- but by some measurements, that may not be considered a lengthy record . . .

"In terms of national reputation, Kaine's highest-profile gig was giving the Democratic response to a State of the Union address a couple of years ago. The reviews were less than kind, and one hopes Kaine's speaking style has improved since."

I remember that speech. It was, not to mince words, a disaster.

But can Kaine deliver a red state?

"Downsides are obvious: no national security experience, only two and a half years as governor, and a virtual unknown outside of Old Dominion. Of course, all those things could potentially be offset if he could deliver Virginia. That's a very big 'if,' of course," says Real Clear Politics.

As I recall, John Edwards didn't carry North Carolina for John Kerry.

My colleague Chris Cillizza provides a reality check:

"How much of the frenzy of reporting on the veepstakes (The Fix very much included) really reflects the decision-making going on in the inner circles of the campaigns? Not all that much. The vice presidential sweepstakes is one of the most closely held conversations in the campaign, and the truth is that most people who are talking to reporters are not usually the people on the inside of those discussions."

I hate when that happens.

And Mark Halperin makes an observation about timing that had puzzled me as well:

"There has been an absurd amount of talk about the foolishness of announcing a pick during the Olympics -- as if there won't be any news covered during the Games, and as if an announcement of a selection wouldn't break through. (Indeed, imagine the sports related puns cable news would use to blare major veepstakes news)."

Is John McCain's disdain for Barack Obama getting the best of him?

Atlantic's Marc Ambinder floats an interesting theory:

"The contempt that many McCain aides hold for Barack Obama rivals the contempt that McCain held for Mitt Romney a year ago. McCain's advisers know that McCain is apt to treat those held in contempt contemptuously, but no [one] inside McCain's campaign believes that aggressively negative television ads and McCain's public dismissals will 'damage one of the most unique and most popular brands in American politics.'

"The cadre of McCain allies who aren't part of the campaign are very worried. They believe that McCain's current crop of advisers are playing to his worse instincts, particularly his pride and his ego. When McCain is privately content, he comes across publicly as happy-go-lucky and magnanimous; satisfied; when he is combative, he comes off as combative and reactive. They worry that he is obsessed with Obama's character and willing to attribute motives to Obama that are simply unbelievable outside of an echo chamber filled with those who are predisposed to believe Obama's a phony."

Also, "some Republicans" tell the New York Times that McCain "risks coming across as angry or partisan" by attacking Obama.

I'm always amazed that politicians will risk their careers for what seem to be relatively modest benefits, such as fixing up a weekend home.

"Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator and a storied figure in Alaska's political history, was indicted today on seven felony counts of making false statements in a corruption case," the L.A. Times reports. "Prosecutors said the 84-year-old Stevens, required to file financial disclosure forms with the Senate on gifts greater than $10,000, had accepted innumerable gifts valued at $250,000 from the oil services company VECO and its CEO from 1999 to 2006 without reporting them. The gifts included material and labor used in the renovation of Stevens' private vacation home in Girdwood section of Anchorage, including a new first floor, a garage, a wraparound deck, plumbing and electrical wiring, as well as a Viking gas grill, furniture and tools."

A reminder of what Stevens once told the Anchorage Daily News:

"I've spent hours here with you here in the past, and I've never seen any result of it at all . . . This paper has done nothing but try to assassinate me."

Another loooong NYT piece on Barack's life, this time as a law professor. You get the feeling the press has run about 10 times as many of these profiles of Obama than McCain?

Politico reports that Ron Fournier, AP's Washington bureau chief, entertained an offer to join McCain's campaign two years ago, when he wasn't with the wire service. The underlying implication seems to be that he's a right-wing tool, especially since he had a bantering correspondence with Karl Rove. I've followed Fournier's work for a long time and have always found him to be straight. But he should respond to this sort of thing directly, rather than handing it off to a spokesman's statement.

At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall takes aim at McCain foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann (and wonders why the MSM isn't doing the same):

"It comes as no surprise that Scheunemann was a staunch supporter of the war. But he was much more that. He was not only a key behind-the-scenes promoter and architect of the war. He also had a troublingly close relationship with Ahmad Chalabi -- the Iraqi exile we now know fed the US reams of bogus intelligence about phantom WMD and ties to al Qaeda and allegedly also shared highly classified US intelligence with the Iranians. Indeed, something I didn't realize, back when he and other neoconservatives were cooking up the Iraq War in 2002, Scheunemann's lobbying firm, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which he set up with the White House's blessing to gin up support for the Iraq War and Chalabi's handler/spokesman Francis Brook all shared an address. Almost as if they were different arms of the same operation.

"And it's not just what happened before the war. He was also a big time advocate of most of the biggest policy screwups of the post-war period -- like the aggressive 'debaathification' program that everyone now realizes was a disaster as well as the decision to freeze the UN out of any role in the reconstruction of the country . . .

"McCain's whole campaign now is based on his judgment on Iraq. So why aren't the campaign reporters telling you more about his top foreign policy advisor's iffy past?"

Don't hold your breath, but National Review would love for Obama to emulate McCain and back state initiatives banning affirmative action:

"Obama, after all, himself recognized the divisiveness of preferential treatment in his Philadelphia race speech earlier this year. And a little over a year ago, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, he acknowledged that his own daughters, for starters, come from privileged backgrounds and thus are 'probably' not deserving of preferential treatment.

"Once upon a time, there was hope that Sen. Obama would be a race-transcending candidate who would bring us all together -- not just another Democratic pol who lacks the courage to stand up to powerful but aging interests in his own party. If Sen. Obama were to take a deep breath and acknowledge that, yes, the logic of his own past pronouncements means that the time has come, at long last, to end racial preferences, it would be good for him and his campaign -- and a great thing for the nation."

I suspect his base wouldn't be wild about that.

Is the Obama team slyly playing the age card? HuffPost's Sam Stein makes the case:

"They have been the preferred adjectives for the Obama campaign when going after its opponent. Following a John McCain misstatement, policy shift, or harsh attack, the Senator is usually labeled 'confused,' 'angry,' or a hybrid of the two. Aides to the Illinois Democrat insist there is no deeper meaning to their word choices. But it is hard not to notice the underlying suggestion of such remarks: John McCain is old.

"It is a standard fare in politics to raise hay over the competency or experience of an opponent. But the methods by which the Obama folks have raised the age issue -- whether deliberately or not -- have reminded many political veterans of the playbook used by Bill Clinton in his 1996 reelection campaign. Like McCain, Bob Dole was a war veteran in his early 70s whose medical ailments caused real-time health concerns. And like Obama, the Clinton camp, according to those who were there, subtly turned age concerns into, at the very least, a political nuisance that impacted the campaign . . .

"But there are real political concerns about the senator's age -- he will turn 72 the day after Obama gives his Democratic convention speech -- and they are not just trepidations over McCain's medical developments. (On Monday, the press latched unto news that a mole was removed from McCain's left temple.) Several prominent outlets have reported that there has been a surprisingly low ceiling to the Arizona Republican's youth appeal. And every rhetorical gaffe, however innocuous, is treated by some as reflective of a diminished mental capacity."

Which might be justified if McCain didn't know that Czechoslovakia is no longer a country or that Iraq doesn't share a border with Pakistan. But as I've written as well, the perception of McCain having an age problem is certainly out there.