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Top ten McCain Vice Presidential picks

McCain needs to pick his partner very carefully. A heartbeat away from the Presidency matters more when the heart in question will be 72 at the time of the inauguration. Here are some of the suggestions:

1) Tim Pawlenty

The Governor of Minnesota is at the top of many pundit's lists. The Springsteen fan likes to emphasise his working class roots and has managed to win twice in a traditionally Democratic state. He's renowned for his personal and rhetorical skills and liked by left and right. The one to watch.

2) Joe Lieberman

Connecticut Senator Lieberman bridges the political divide. A former Democrat, he still supports most of their policies but is also in favour of the Iraq war. He's made presidential and vice-presidential runs before and is an old friend of John McCain. The two Senators were together on the recent UK trip of McCain's and were frequently see yukking it up. But age is a big, big issue. Lieberman is 66. Together the ticket will add up to 138 years of experience.

3) Mitt Romney

McCain and Romney fell out several times during the Republican nomination race. But they've been cozying up of late and Romney has been spotted fundraising with McCain in the west. The worse the economy gets, the higher his chances. His impeccable financial credentials are his strongest card. He would make McCain seem more conservative (probably - Romney is, ahem, flexible). This would help with the base but would it put off independents?

4) Condoleezza Rice

The dream ticket for some. The nightmare for others. The Secretary of State's race and gender would boost the Republican argument that they're not just a party for white men. Condi speaks five languages and would provide some much-needed foreign policy clout. The odds of selecting her might have been higher if Clinton had wrapped up the Democratic nomination. But no-one would sneeze at this option. So what's not to like (if you are a Republican)? In a word - Bush. McCain's presidential bid won't fly if he is tethered to the President. And wouldn't Condi do just that?

5) Charlie Crist

Also a popular option. The popular Governor of Florida might bring the swing-state with him, and he's not even a Bush. The Times has written before about the likelihood of him making VP. He appeals to both independents and more conservative Republicans. A possible snag? He's single and has been forced to repeatedly defend his sexuality. Or is that a snag?

6) Bobby Jindal

The Governor of Louisiana, his name's cropped up several times recently. He's made waves with ethics reform in his homestate. The child of Indian immigrants, he'd add some diversity to the ticket and, at just 36, years old, he's half McCain's age. He also has a strong background in healthcare. 

7) Sarah Palin

A former Miss Congeniality, the young Alaska senator has made quite a splash. The first female governor of her state, she might help bring women into the fold. And her strong support of family values and pro-life views will appeal to Republican voters who might be alienated by McCain's more maverick opinions.

8) Colin Powell

The former Secretary of State is a much-loved and well-respected moderate. But his denouncement of the Iraq mission may make him less appealing to McCain. Another catch? He's advised Barack Obama on foreign policy and praised him heavily in the past. An endorsement isn't out of the question.

9) Haley Barbour

The Governor of Mississippi would help secure the South. He's been head of the RNC and no-one could quibble with his conservatism. Knows everyone in politics but there is one large cloud hanging over his head. A series of Katrina-related ethics violations were alleged last summer. McCain might decide to steer clear.

10) Mike Huckabee:

If he really wants to propitiate the base, McCain should go with Huckabee. The former Arkansas Governor scored surprisingly well during the nomination campaign, taking Ohio, Kansas, Louisiana and West Virginia. And McCain would get two for one. Huckabee's bound to bring celebrity endorser Chuck Norris along for the ride. On the other hand, the guy doesn't even believe in the theory of evolution.

Today's Web Grab

You might enjoy:

• Andrew Sullivan in The Daily Dish: Thinking through California
• Gideon Rachman in International Affairs Blog: The internet and the presidential election
• Democracy in America: An elegy for Hillary
• Bill Edgar in The Game: The fiendishly difficult Friday quiz
• Andrew Lilico in Centre Right: On victim narratives

The American PMQs: What John McCain should expect

Yesterday John McCain made this striking promise:

I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both Houses to take questions and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons.

Well, I spent five years of my life working week in and week out on Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs), helping prepare both former Prime Minister John Major and then Tory leader, and arch exponent of the PMQ artform, William Hague.

So here, from experience, is what our American friends can expect.

First, it takes a good deal of time. This is a big commitment McCain has made.

If you don't prepare for PMQs you will be roasted alive, whether you are asking or answering the questions. William Hague spent what amounted to about 75 per cent of one working day a week preparing to ask his questions. And senior staff spent even more time than that.

This is the reason why John Major advised Tony Blair to cut the sessions from two a week to just one, which he did immediately he took office. So the burden of PMQs could be eased by being made infrequent, but then a great deal of its force and purpose would be lost.

Second, this time need not be wasted.

The President will need to be briefed on every topic under the sun in order to be prepared. This can be used to hold the rest of the executive to account. The need to produce convincing arguments to all sorts of questions can act as a spur to the whole government. And it can help identify areas where progress is slow.

Third, PMQs provides a timetable for government. The need to answer questions can often speed up events and even drive them.

For instance, Tony Blair moved to force his close friend Peter Mandelson to resign on a Wednesday morning, because he feared that he would find it hard to defend him in the House of Commons later that day. Subsequently things looked a little different - if he had had more time, Mandelson might not have had to go.

Fourth, PMQs are part theatre and you have to work at that.

Much of PMQs is the real stuff - you get real answers, see real weaknesses and learn about real dividing lines. But there is a large vaudeville element. One of my jobs was to help with jokes and if the jokes worked the session was often viewed as a success.

You can't expect to simply wing the jokes - you have to come prepared.

Of course, you might seek to reduce the vaudeville element and make the session more like a committee hearing, but again it would lose a huge part of its force if you did.

Fifth, PMQs provide participants with a strategic dilemma. Do you try to win the exchange or do you try to win over the public?

William Hague famously won his exchanges with Tony Blair - but to no avail, he lost in 2001 in a landslide and had to stand down. Blair, you see, was winning with the public. Voters thought Hague was too much the debater, not enough the statesman.

Yet if you play it too cool, your own side in the room is disappointed and may begin to grumble about you.

Sixth, the details of McCain's idea matter.

The exact steps in the little dance that is PMQs are fundamental to its nature. For instance, the fact that the Leader of the Opposition (the Conservative Party leader) has six questions while the leader of the Liberal Democrats has only two, alters the questions they ask and the impact they make profoundly.

So how many times a month will this session go ahead? Who will be allowed to ask questions? How many will they be allowed to ask? Will the participants be seated or standing? Will the questioners be grouped by party?

Only if he answers these questions will we see the nature of what McCain has in mind.

Here's a video of William Hague talking about PMQs and a PMQs joke which I may or may not have had a hand in.

Is it just me or are they getting younger?

The new mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma (pop. 400,000) will certainly bring a fresh perspective to the job. A freshman perspective, that is.

John Tyler Hammons is a political science student at the University of Oklahoma. At just 19, he stormed to victory with over 70% of the vote, dispatching a 70-year-old opponent en route (Cue consternation in the McCain camp).

Hammons clearly honed his political talents in high school where he headed up both the Young Democrats and Young Republicans. His next aim is the Governorship and then the White House.

We would say 'aim small' but, frankly, it seems a little late for that.

Alice Fishburn

Magazine Rack - Issue 225

You might enjoy:

• Joan Acocella in Smithsonian: You got a problem with that?
• Christopher Hitchens in New Statesman: Just give peace a chance?
• Michael Marshall in New Scientist: Global biodiversity slumps 27% in 35 years
• Jaimie Seaton and Criselda Yabes in Newsweek: Drop in the ocean

Check out Red Box for...

...Ed Balls, live at the Albert Hall.

What do we think Yvette Cooper's whispering to him during this somewhat alarming serenade?

'Stop, please stop' or 'I'm going to need another glass of wine if this continues...'

Other suggestions welcome.

Alice Fishburn

The results are in: Hillary Clinton for VP

Here's one that Hillary did win. Comment Central readers want her on the ticket.

Many thousands of you voted for Hillary and she was way ahead of her nearest challenger - General Wesley Clark.

It's these sort of numbers, I guess that lead Mike Smithson over on Political Betting to start speculating - could the Convention force the dream ticket on to the candidates?

Such an outcome is, after all, theoretically possible.

The last open election for VP candidate was 1956 which saw JFK defeated by Estes Kefauver, despite the fact that the nominee (Adlai Stevenson) hated Kefauver. In 1972 Thomas Eagleton was backed by McGovern but still had to defeat other candidates. The resulting election pushed McGovern's speech out of prime time.

And it is the chaos of the McGovern experience that is one reason why Mike's speculation is unlikely to come about. I think by the time they get to their Convention the Dems will be pretty desperate to look unified.

Friday's comment from the papers in...

Today in Times Comment

• Gerard Baker: Barack Obama: the new Great Redeemer
• Ben Macintyre: UFO: an Undeniably Fading Obsession
• Magnus Linklater: The age of personal vitriolic abuse
• Mick Hume: SATs waste far too much time
• Jane Owen: Chelsea Flower Show has lost the plot
• Ann Treneman: It could be all change at Crewe as David Cameron drives agenda
• David Wighton: Ben Verwaayen waves goodbye to BT from his starting point
• Peter Riddell: Billions of pounds are left hanging on what Gordon Brown said

And from the rest of the papers...

• Michael Gove: (The Telegraph) - Opportunity should knock, not be blocked
• John Kampfner: (The Telegraph) - Brown's Labour party needs a new vision
• Con Coughlin: (The Telegraph) - China shows a human face with earthquake rescue mission
• Polly Toynbee: (The Guardian) - Goodbye, good times. Now Labour has to show just whose side it is on
• Simon Jenkins: (The Guardian) - When it comes to kissing and telling, you can't beat this 15th-century gadget
• Mark Lawson: (The Guardian) - Weapons we can't handle
• Dominic Lawson: (The Independent) - He appears to have robotic self-discipline. But inside, Brown is a ferment of emotion
• Joan Bakewell: (The Independent) - No wonder the toffs are back with a vengeance
• Terence Blacker: (The Independent) - Ignore the experts: here's the secret of happiness
• Stephen Glover: (The Daily Mail) - Yes, the headlines are certainly bleak...but we're not all doomed yet
• Philip Stephens: (The Financial Times) - Burma’s victims pay price for foreign policy realism

And from around the world...

• David Brooks: (The New York Times) - Obama admires Bush
• E.J.Dionne Jr: (The Washington Post) - Brand on the run
• Robert S. Strauss: (The Washington Post) - The danger of fighting on
• Peggy Noonan: (The Wall Street Journal) - Pity party
• Brent Staples: (International Herald Tribune) _ A secret history of race
• Alon Liel: (Haaretz) - Please, Mr. President

Today's Web Grab

You might enjoy:

• David Frum's Diary: In advance of that debate
• Jim Vandehei & Mike Allen in Politico: Six ways the GOP can save itself
• Benedict Brogan's Blog: Is he boring us into submission?
• Dizzy Thinks: Kinnock defeats Maggie Thatcher at the 1987 General Election
• Deborah Haynes in Inside Iraq: Delivering aid to Sadr City

A demographic shift for Obama?

Stephen Colbert explains why:

The scale of the Zimbabwe tragedy

Please don't miss Peter Oborne's magnificent piece on Zimbabwe in today's Daily Mail.

Peter has covered the tragedy of that country with necessary relentlessness and courage. His great fear is that the rest of us are forgetting Zimbabwe:

The world's attention has shifted away.

Now, with the focus no longer on him, Mugabe is free to continue this unprecedented campaign of electoral cleansing.

For the past week, having slipped into Zimbabwe as a businessman, I have seen the relentless increase in intimidation from government forces.

I can report that every day it is reaching a new level of intensity, sweeping like a killer virus through the country.

Even by Mugabe's standards, the scale and brutality is horrifying.

He is right. Our attention mustn't wander until Mugabe and his thugs are gone.

How to get up in the morning

And on a more light-hearted note.

Guaranteed to drive you mad in the morning but at least it kickstarts your brain while doing it.

Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Puzzle Alarm Clock.

Alice Fishburn

Magazine Rack - Issue 224

You might enjoy:

• John Kass in Chicago Tribune: Because no man should feel the agony of this film
• Rod Liddle in The Spectator: C'mon Cherie: Even Goering stuck up a bit for Hitler
• Terry Eagleton in London Review of Books: Unhoused
• Joshua Green in The Atlantic: The amazing money machine

You say Obama but I say...

It's a truth universally acknowledged that where one political spouse leads, the other is bound to follow. For Exhibit A, please see Hill and Bill.

So it's refreshing that while Obama revels in the prized Edwards endorsement, he actually only managed to get half of it.

According to The New York Times:

Missing from the event was Elizabeth Edwards, Mr. Edwards’s wife, who has been a passionate proponent of universal health care. The Edwardses were said to be split on the endorsement, with Mrs. Edwards said to favor Mrs. Clinton because of her preference for parts of the Clinton health care plan.

The Budget that destroyed Brown's alibi

I could barely listen to this morning's performance by the Prime Minister on the Today programme so irritating is his inability to give anything approaching a truthful, principled answer on any question and so painful the contrast with the way his predecessor handled such interviews.

His attempt to suggest that the £2.7bn borrowing was a deliberate measure to give a fillip to the economy was painful. Truly painful.

But I struggled my way though it.

And two points struck me.

The first was that he appears to have changed his investment rule. When John Humphrys asked him about exceeding the public sector debt ceiling on 40 per cent of GDP he interrupted, denied that he was breaking the rule and said that it applied over the economic cycle.

That's funny. I could have sworn that rule applied every year.

If he has changed the rule, he has opened the way to a massive borrowing spree.

The second point concerned the abolition of the 10p rate. He claimed he was doing this in order to simplify taxes at two rates.

Now, this has always annoyed me, because he introduced the 10p rate in the first place.

Until this point, the Government had a response to any smartarse who mentioned the fact that Brown had introduced the rate. No, they said, he didn't introduce it for political reasons (to make himself look like a low tax Chancellor) and he didn't abolish it for political reasons (to make the Tories look silly and cut the basic rate).

Instead he did it for principled reasons. He wanted to help the poor and do it quickly. As tax credits didn't exist he put the 10p rate in place, always intending to replace it later when credits could do the work instead. And in his last Budget that moment finally arrived.

Really. That was their line.

But there's a problem, you see. That line was fine (ish) when they were planning to compensate everybody by changing the tax credits system. But now they have done it a different way - through tax allowances. And that method, of course, was available to them in 1997 when they introduced the 10p rate.

Indeed Andrew Dilnot at the Institute for Fiscal Studies urged them at the time to use allowances and not complicate the tax system.

So Alastair Darling's emergency Budget has destroyed Brown's alibi.

He now has no defence against the charge that his introduction and abolition of the 10p rate were political stunts.

Thursday's comment from the papers in...

Today in Times Comment

• Anatole Kaletsky: It all looks like Enron government
• Camilla Cavendish: Churchgoing isn't always religious
• Matthew Parris: Enough. Get me a squirrel recipe
• Carol Midgley: Coming soon: the old geezer show
• Eamonn Butler: Watch out, the Gestapo are about
• Ann Treneman: Turgid Gordon Brown is no bonus for Bruce Forsyth
• Dan Sabbagh: Why is there no investigation into dodgy phone-ins?
• Peter Riddell: Economy is key to revival of Gordon Brown's fortunes

And from the rest of the papers...

• Mary Riddell: (The Telegraph) - Cherie Blair's memoirs set a bad example
• Edmund Conway: (The Telegraph) - Financial crisis: Labour's history is repeating
• Alan Cochrane: (The Telegraph) - Scottish National Party-watch, aka the day job
• Timothy Garton Ash: (The Guardian) - Poland is overtaking Britain on the road to Europe - and to the euro
• Libby Brooks: (The Guardian) - Spirit of the Wombles
• John Harris: (The Guardian) - The tactics of Crewe expose a truly nasty party: Labour
• John Rentoul: (The Independent) - Cameron is leaving Brown to hang himself – but he must still show what he'd do instead
• Johann Hari: (The Independent) - Are there just too many people in the world?
• Janet Street-Porter: (The Independent) - We're ready to rise up against eco-towns
• Stephen Glover: (The Daily Mail) - Yes, the headlines are certainly bleak...but we're not all doomed yet
• John Gapper: (The Financial Times) - A Sex and the City guide to the entertainment industry

And from around the world...

• Gail Collins: (The New York Times) - A victory plan for Hillary
• Marie Cocco: (The Washington Post) - Misogyny I won't miss
• Robert Novak: (The Washington Post) - A column's 45 years
• Daniel Henninger: (The Wall Street Journal) - Democracies don't let people die
• Robert D. Kaplan: (International Herald Tribune) - Aid at the point of a gun
• Wieland Wagner: (De Spiegel) - China's 'Grandpa Wen' Spins a Disaster into a PR Coup

Today's Web Grab

You might enjoy:

• Fraser Nelson in Coffee House: Can Purnell rescue Labour?
• Edward Gorman in Formula One Blog: Darren Heath: A picture from Turkey or "Curvature of the Earth"
• Marc Ambinder in A reported blog on politics: Good timing for Jim Webb
• Iain Dale's Diary: Ten signs you have joined the establishment
• John Dickerson in Slate: The McCain and Obama Talkalot

Labour's doomed four point plan for recovery

Ben Brogan sets out Labour's four point plan for recovery on his must-read blog.

Step one is to put the 10p thing behind them, step two to get past the memoirs, step three to do better than expected (having set the bar ridiculously low) in Crewe and Nantwich and step four to avoid defeat over the 42 day proposals.

As Ben points out these are internal objectives, all about survival and keeping the Parliamentary Labour party (PLP) onside. There is no hope of recovery if this is their plan.

Why has Bush given up golf?

Never let it be said that President Bush doesn't know the meaning of sacrifice. In an interview with Politico, he revealed why he has given up one of his favourite pastimes:

I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.

Alice Fishburn

More bad news for Brown's spitting image

The Brown waxwork fiasco continues.

After receiving no response from No. 10, an irritated Madame Tussauds held a vote on whether the PM should be immortalised with his peers. Here's Boulton & Co's report on the result:

A whopping 83.8% voted against Gordon Brown entering the World Leaders Zone in the waxwork museum, making him the first Prime Minister in 150 years NOT to have his doppleganger in Madame Tussauds.

Still. There's one thing Brown won't have to worry about. The previous PM suffered through Bling Blair and Holiday Blair. What on earth would they have done to Son of the Manse Brown?

Alice Fishburn