Obama Should Pick Sebelius For VP

The New Republic: With Her Executive Competence, The Kansas Governor Would Be An Ideal Choice

(The New Republic)  This column was written by Bradford Plumer.

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The last few weeks have seen plenty of obsessing over who Barack Obama and John McCain ought to pick to be their running mates. But for all the endless discussion about which candidate might best bolster Obama's message or help McCain carry Ohio, the electoral implications of any given veep pick are, as my colleague Josh Patashnik has argued, greatly overrated. So the candidates probably shouldn't spend too much time worrying about all those horse-race considerations and should instead just focus on selecting someone who doesn't raise any obvious red flags, will work well within the administration, and would, in a pinch, make a good president.

And, if we're playing by those ground rules, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius is an ideal pick for Obama. Granted, she doesn't offer many campaign-season advantages. She's a woman, and that's hugely significant in its own right -- the prospect of busting through two glass ceilings in November would be remarkable -- but early polls don’t actually show Sebelius luring any additional female voters to the Democratic side. (In any case, her appeal to women might be counterbalanced by all those hardened Hillary Clinton supporters who are reportedly livid at the thought that Obama would pick a non-Hillary female running mate.) And while Sebelius is a popular governor from a red state, the odds of her delivering Kansas for Obama are slim.

But assuming that Obama's search committee doesn't uncover any major scandals-in-waiting, Sebelius wouldn't drag down the Obama campaign, either. Yes, her State of the Union response this year was a clunker, but Obama is more than rousing enough for two people, and who knows, some voters might actually like what Camille Paglia called Sebelius's "cordial, smoothly reassuring, and blandly generic WASPiness."

That just leaves the big question: Would Sebelius actually make a good vice president (and, for that matter, president)? After six years as governor, she's proven that she knows her stuff when it comes to policy -- see, for example, this wonky interview she did a few years ago, covering everything from health care to the economy. She's a deft political operator, as evidenced by her ability to persuade a bunch of Kansas Republicans to switch parties back in 2006. And she knows how to survive, and win, grueling political brawls -- as when, this past year, she thrice vetoed plans for new coal-fired plants in Kansas, in the face of ads associating her with Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The only substantive knock against her is that she has little foreign policy experience, which is a genuine drawback; but, in the end, there are still plenty of cabinet positions for people like Joe Biden and Sam Nunn.

Sebelius biggest strength is the fact that she's the most competent executive of any of the rumored Democratic veep candidates, save for possibly former Virginia governor Mark Warner (whom the Democrats need to win a Senate seat anyway). The fact that, as governor, she erased a $1.1 billion budget deficit in her first year of office without raising taxes, and later steered a large education-funding package through a fractious legislature, would suggest that she's perfectly capable of heading up the executive branch -- and doing it well.

And it's not just Sebelius's experience, but the nature of her experience, that makes her a good fit in an Obama administration in particular. Take her two-term tenure as Kansas's insurance commissioner, which hasn't received much attention to date. Before Sebelius's surprise victory in 1994, the state had only had three commissioners in its previous 50 years, all career bureaucrats. Between its creaking IT system and morass of useless regulations, the agency had become hidebound and utterly useless to the consumers it was supposed to represent. Not only did Sebelius turn the department around but she wrenched it out from under the influence of the insurance industry. (It helped that she pointedly refused to take campaign contributions from insurers.) In the process, she transformed the department into a driver of progressive policy, successfully pushing to expand tax credits for businesses that provide health insurance and creating an anti-fraud unit to monitor predatory insurers. Most famously, she blocked an Indiana insurer from acquiring Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Kansas on the grounds that it would unfairly raise premiums.

Good-government reforms can be dry and unexciting, but Sebelius's track record actually jibes well with Obama's belief that the U.S. government is broken and needs to be retooled before liberal policies can ever have a prayer of working. That vision explains why Obama's website is crammed full of open-government proposals, why he focuses so much of his time on ethics bills, and why his advisers love to tout his vision of an “iPod government” that's sleek, user-friendly, and flexible enough to confront new problems as they arise.

[skylights]

Sebelius doesn''t need a dye job, she looks sophisticated. And Charl82, the only people who wouldn''t vote for someone with Hussein as a middle name are the same idiots who would never vote Democratic anyway. This is why the Repugs will lose big in November. Racist ideology is on its way out.

[ggm1957]

Hillary would be a horrible choice for VP. She would be dangerous as she only is interested in one thing and that is to be president. She is a known liar and how anyone could still be all for her is just unbelievable. I want a president and vice president that our kids can look up to and that does not include Hillary. Obama is the best choice by far and I am looking forward to voting in November. I voted for Obama in our Vermont primary in March and am looking forward to voting for Obama in the general election. This is the first time I can truly say I am voting FOR and not against someone. Obama truly has this 50 year old white middle class working female believing in a better America.

[ioweign]

I hold out hope that Michael Bloomberg will stand for president and knock both those loosers out of the running. We have the worst crop of presidential candidates since 1950 this time around. We now know what the bottom of the barrel looks like.

Posted by jmcgilvray at 02:03 AM : Jun 19, 2008


Try 1952 - Dwight Eisenhower (R) vs. Adlai Stevenson (D)

[luvwknd69]

Sebelius is a BAD pick for Obama and will only destroy his chances of beating McSame!
Barack should convince Edwards to be his VP, or pick Hillary if he wants a winning ticket . . . Otherwise it''s McSame!

[davemstewart]

Imagine This: Barack Obama chooses John McCain as his VP running mate. And, John McCain chooses Barack Obama as his. Then let America decide AND be more united in the process. Imagine the message... and the possibilities. A united America... it''s a good thing!

[charl82]

Why is everyone afraid to list the full names of the
two men running for President?
John Sidney McCain
Barack Hussein Obama
Why don''t reporters give the full background story of
the two men starting from birth until present day?
Why do newspapers not give all the facts and allow the voter make his own choice? Why do they have to endorse a candidate? Just the facts, please. Also, why do they make much ado about age. Noone knows wxactly when they are going to die!

[johnny343sc]

"If you vote for Mccain, you are voting to get replaced by an illegal immigrant!"

THAT WILL HAPPEN REGARDLESS OF WHO GETS INTO THE WHITE HOUSE IN NOVEMBER.

OBAMA BIN LADEN, THE HYPOCRITE ON HATE, SHOULD PICK JERIMIAH WRIGHT FOR HIS VP.

OBAMA CAN OBVIOUSLY DO NO WRONG ACCORDING TO MAINSTREAM MEDIA... WHAT COULD IT HURT?

;)

[tommancuso]

I support Obama and will vote for him and have made no secret of it. And you just wouldn''''t believe the things I have been called. I can hardly believe it and all I am doing is voting for him. Politics is truly a nasty business.

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Cheer up, Element51, the Republican destruction machine may have worn out its welcome. You may be pleasantly surprised in November - we may even expand the Democratic congressional margin and begin to repair the damage. It will take years...

[Razzl]

"I am still a Hillary Clinton supporter."

And bully for you, nobody wants to take that away from you, but I hope we all noticed the outrageous comments coming from the conservatives on the Supreme Court last week about the legal rights of detainees and remember that the next president must be Obama if we''re to prevent the court from being stacked with more Scalias who will take women''s rights back to the stone age. You need to stay focused on what''s important and not hurt your interests out of resentment at a temporary setback...

[Razzl]

I''ve argued that ethnography has trumped geography in our era of cable tv, that race and gender are more important than what state a candidate comes from in the presidential campaign, but while I think gender is the critical motive for choosing Sebelius, it can''t hurt that she has good geography--being a part of that red west that Obama wants to steal from the GOP this year.

Not having foreign policy experience is, believe me, no disadvantage to an America that wants to return to the promise of the end of the cold war that we could stop being the world''s policeman. Those who claim all the foreign policy experience usually use it to justify hegemonism, not the world view of the new Jeffersonian public.

I''ve also argued that any adult citizen of this country with no political experience could have done a better job running the country than Bush and his dimwitted neocon "brain trust", so no bar of experience is too low in this campaign...