The VP Choice: Obama’s First Executive Decision

For someone who strives to become the 44th president of the United States, it’s hard to imagine that Sen. Barack Obama has never made an executive decision in his entire professional career. His first executive decision will be his pick for vice president. At least Sen. John McCain was a Navy Captain who ran the service’s largest air-squadron. Naval officers take on management responsibilities from the day they report to their first duty station. He approved expenditures, formulated budgets, assigned and managed key personnel and was responsible for the overall management and safety of the squadron. Sen. Obama, on the other hand, has only managed to get himself to work in the morning. Sen. Obama’s selection for VP will be telling. Will he select someone who is best qualified, or most politically expedient? The chances of him selecting a highly qualified woman is virtually nil, thanks to his narrow defeat of Sen. Hillary Clinton. To choose a woman other than her would be an act of political suicide with his base because her many hard-core female supporters would simply abandon him. He also won’t select Hillary as his running mate because he doesn’t want to be upstaged by her, and he doesn’t want former President Bill Clinton as the first second gentleman of the country. Would you want someone like him lurking around your mansion and harassing the staff? I can’t blame Sen. Obama if he doesn’t select Hillary. Can you imagine the customary phone call the vice president makes to the president every day to inquire about his health? It would be like a death watch. “You’re still around?” She might even “accidentally” push him off the stairway of Air Force One if she had the opportunity. Many presidents were former governors where they acquired executive experience before jumping into what is arguably the biggest, most responsible job in the world. Sen. Obama’s supporters overlook his inexperience for the sake of change. Hopefully, if Sen. Obama is elected, he will have the good sense to surround himself with highly qualified advisors with expertise in everything from personnel management to national security, since he has none. So where does he go to find people with such credentials? He’s been tapping into the leftovers of the Clinton and Carter administrations. This is like hiring the captain of the Titanic to skipper your yacht. Sen. Obama has been vetting potential VPs for months. Those who weren’t vetted seem to make it a point to announce on cable news channels and Sunday news programs that they wouldn’t be interested in the position if it was offered. I’ll also put myself on record that I will not accept Sen. Obama’s kind offer to become his vice-presidential nominee. Now I don’t have to explain to my friends why I wasn’t even considered. He knew I wouldn’t accept! People who cannot control their egos like that shouldn’t be considered in the first place. Will Sen. Obama pick a VP that can help him in the Electoral College, like the eager governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine? Or will he pick someone who has foreign affairs experience like documented plagiarizer Sen. Biden, who doesn’t have an executive’s background, either? Is he looking for a clone to take his place, or someone who can advise him about the whole spectrum of management decisions that must be made as president? We should know soon. The timing of his selection will be telling as well. Will he beat Sen. McCain to the punch and make an announcement before he does, or will he wait and see who he picks before making his choice? During his rambling Press Club news conference, Rev. Jeremiah Wright volunteered to be Sen. Obama’s VP. Paris Hilton is available, and the hybrid energy policy she outlined in her tongue-in-cheek commercial for president makes more sense than Sen. Obama’s, so I guess that eliminates her. John Edwards was in the running, but his philandering pretty much sealed his fate. Still, a messiah like President Obama might resurrect Edwards to assume a cabinet position that gives him plenty of travel and a staff he can tap when he has uncontrollable urges. Whoever Sen. Obama picks for his running mate, it will reveal his executive decision-making process. Will his pick reflect who is best for him, or for his country?