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We're doing things a little differently: With Donald Trump's vice presidential campaign in full swing, we conducted a highly scientific poll of 16 Post Opinion contributors.
Our burning question: Who is the wisest choice to be President Trump's vice president, and why?
First, the criteria: We only considered candidates who were being actively investigated by the Trump campaign, and as The Washington Post reports, at least eight people have received requests to file paperwork to run.
In order of contributor preference, they are:
Description of our top choices
Six of our contributors chose Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) as their top choice, but the rest of the responses were very diverse: former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Rep. Byron Donald (R-FL) were the only Republicans not to make the top pick.
We asked a few people to explain their thoughts, and here's what they said: Let me start with me.
Alexi McCammond: My choice was North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. Unlike the other candidates, Burgum is a bland guy. No drama! A proven businessman. (Microsoft bought his tech startup for over $1 billion in 2001.) He knows how to support Trump without being a sycophant. That's why I think he's the most likely to stand up to Trump if there's another constitutional crisis like January 6, 2021.
It doesn't matter that North Dakota has three electoral votes. It doesn't matter that Burgum has little national name recognition. The electoral value that comes with a vice presidential nominee (which is actually mostly based on identity politics) is a myth. So save the home state advantage for someone else.
Marc Thiessen: To win in November, Trump cannot rely solely on the enthusiasm of his MAGA base. He needs to unite the party and forge an electoral coalition that blends the new populist right with traditional Reaganite conservatives. Few people appeal to both camps as much as Sen. Tom Cotton (AR). He is a staunch Trump supporter and defender, and he enthralled MAGA by causing The New York Times to collapse in a miasma of wokeness with a single op-ed.
But he's also one of the most vocal and effective defenders of Reaganite ideals and American leadership on the world stage in Congress. The future of the Republican Party depends on harnessing populist energy tempered with traditional conservative principles. Cotton embodies both, which could help Trump appeal to both groups.
Sure, Marco Rubio got stuck on air 11 years ago; Chris Christie slammed him live three years later before the New Hampshire primary. The Florida senator was a Republican golden boy. But his base rejected his studied George W. Bush-era persona; his transformation into a Trump devotee was unconvincing and unashamed.
But that's the point: Mr Rubio was raised on a style of open-minded, pro-democracy conservatism, and while his worldview has been the subject of much speculation, it is almost certainly not Mr Trump's.
Meanwhile, the Senate has been tackling big policy issues like the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit and even bipartisan immigration reform in a way designed to advance debate and get legislation enacted, not just make political points. It also voted to certify the results of the 2020 election.
Americans should welcome Rubio into the Trump campaign room more than anyone else on this list, not because he's the golden boy, but because he's a veteran.
Megan McArdle: Tim Scott seems like a natural choice for Trump for a number of reasons. The most obvious are demographic ones: at the margin, he might increase Trump's appeal to black voters whose loyalty to the Democratic Party is wavering, and he provides a convenient rebuttal to accusations of racism (whether or not that rebuttal is convincing).
But that's not the only thing Scott balances out as a candidate. Scott is a religious man from the Deep South, with a fascinating Horatio Alger background that Trump can't honestly relate to. And he exudes a sunny optimism that contrasts nicely with Trump's twilight of the gods vibe. And he remains pretty appealing to many of Trump's conservative opponents, while also displaying the kind of submissive loyalty that Trump clearly craves, so they might vote for him a little longer in the hope that the vice president will succeed the aging president.
Of course, for that very reason, Trump, who is far from the spotlight, might want a more unlikely successor.
Shadi Hamid: Tim Scott's evolution from a semi-principled, moderate South Carolina senator to a full-on Trump apologist has been disheartening to watch. But it's also shown the aggressiveness that propelled him to the top of Trump's running mate list. Scott's combination of shamelessness and ambition seems especially well-suited to someone like Donald Trump, who takes great delight in making people disloyal on his behalf.
If we know anything about American politics, it's that identity politics is important to critics and supporters alike. Scott would be a historic first for the Republican Party, providing cover for moderates seeking further reassurance that Trump is not a racist.
Trump is already making waves among black voters, with about 30% of black men saying they will definitely or probably vote for him. Voting is a deeply personal act, and small things can be crucial deciding factors for voters unsure of what to do come November.
To be clear, this does not mean that Scott is the “wise” choice for the country, but simply that he is the wise choice for Trump's electoral prospects — the two are entirely different and may even be inversely correlated.
Jason Willick: Elise Stefanik, the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, was a leading contender for vice presidential nomination a few months ago, but she seems to have fallen off the radar as attention shifted to a handful of male senators. Still, I think she makes a lot of sense for Trump. Her roots, like Trump's, are as a social moderate in New York. She voted for the Equality Act and supported the Pay Gap Act. She is pro-life, but is not considered dogmatic on the abortion issue. Like Trump, she sees herself as more of a progressive left fighter than a religious conservative.
In other words, she may appeal to more moderate and female voters than other vice presidential candidates, but she won't budge on the key issue of loyalty to Trump. Her public profile after attacking college presidents over the Israeli war could help Trump win over voters uneasy about Biden's cautious approach to the conflict.
The downside for Stefanik is that she is the youngest of the group, and as a U.S. representative (rather than governor or senator), she might suddenly be perceived as lacking the dignity to assume the presidency. If Trump is looking for someone with the right amount of charm but more personal weight, he might turn to Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.
David Ignatius: If you strip away all the crazy stuff, what are the core themes of Trump’s campaign? The bottom line is that this wealthy, tyrannical guy is campaigning as a “victim” of the elites and the “deep state” they supposedly control. He brings up this culture war theme again and again, and it seems odd to me, but millions of Americans seem to buy into his image as a UFC-loving billionaire populist. So maybe when Trump picks his vice president, he’ll pick someone who reinforces that argument. And who better to do that than the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” who expresses Trump’s high-end anti-elitism and the roots of his politics of discontent better than any other book I’ve read?
Vance also seems more “VP-like” (meaning reliably subservient to his boss) than Cotton or Rubio. Both of these guys seem like great candidates for a Trump administration, and might be the best people to help win key Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. I'm not a political reporter, and I'm not betting my Kentucky farm on it. But we might see a Trump-Vance TV race.
🙅🏽♀️🙅🏽♀️🙅🏽♀️
Trump's running mate is expected to deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election, but Vance deftly steered clear of that in an interview with The New York Times, where The Bulwark's Andrew Egger wrote:
No kidding. This may be the most impressive election bluff I've ever seen. It's a tour de force that does three things simultaneously: it endorses the most aggressive and egregious strategy for stealing an election that Trump devised in 2020, it exonerates Trump from a strategy that didn't work, and it mocks liberals who think that wielding raw political power to steal an election is a step toward dictatorship.
After all, as Vanity Fair's Molly Jong-Fast writes, “the longer this fight goes on, the better it is for Trump,” because “the VP selection is a sad act of self-deprecation. … The greatest irony, of course, is that Trump seems to think of the VP selection as an essentially meaningless formality.”
She deftly points out what Trump said in an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier in January:
“Well, it's never really had that much of an impact on an election, whether it was an election or a primary, and that's great. … The people that I like are really good people, pretty standard people, so I don't think people are that surprised.”
This week, 4 years ago
At this point in 2020, protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd were continuing, and Confederate statues were beginning to be toppled. As Christine Emba wrote in Post Opinions, “Statues and obelisks honor the dubious heroes of a racially charged past, and protests have prompted congressions and legislatures around the world to reconsider these monuments. But rather than wait for official decisions to be trickled down, protesters have taken action themselves. This is a landmark change.”
Summer is Big Brat season. Scachi Cole explains it all in Slate. Read more here. Praise for MTV's 'Real World': The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum argues that modern reality TV is based on a 1990s experiment. Take a closer look. From Post Opinions' “Impromptu” podcast: Americans can't agree on immigration, so what's next? Listen here.
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