Obama/Bayh 2008?

After days of media hysteria surrounding Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, speculation abounds that Barack Obama is on the verge of selecting Indiana Senator Evan Bayh as his running mate. 

Obama will be arriving in South Bend, Indiana at 6:30pm tomorrow and will not be departing until 3:25pm the next day. As of yet, he has no public events scheduled.

Sure, this may be yet another cannily-coordinated attempt to throw the media of the Vice-Presidential scent but, even as a convinced McCain supporter, I'm forced to admit that Senator Bayh would be solid addition to the Obama ticket.

Here are four compelling reasons why:

1. Bayh hails from Indiana, a historically Republican state which last backed the Democrats under Lyndon Johnson in 1964. He was re-elected to the Senate in 2004 with 62% of the vote at the same time as George W. Bush blew John Kerry out of the water 60/40. With the loss of three congressional seats in 2006 and an unpopular Republican Governor seeking re-election this year, some argue that the state is in play. Whilst I believe it would be unlikely, even with Bayh on the ballot paper, that Obama would carry the state, his candidacy will undoubtedly force the Republicans to play defensive in a state they should be winning by a double digit margin whilst diverting crucial resources away from the nearby swing states of Iowa, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan and Wisconsin.


2. Bayh, as a former two-term Governor, would bring executive experience to the ticket. He left office with approval ratings that not even a North Korean state-owned opinion polling company acting on the direct instructions of Kim Jong-Il could have claimed to have recorded.


3. Despite being a ordinarily dependable vote for the Democratic agenda throughout his political career, Bayh would bring a carefully cultivated and long nurtured moderate – some may even argue, conservative – presence to the ticket.  As Governor of Indiana, he enacted the largest tax cut in the history of the state whilst balancing its budget for the first time in decades.  In the Senate, he voted for the ban on partial-birth abortions and opposed Democratic-led efforts to overturn the Bush tax cuts.


4. Bayh is a stalwart of the Clintonista Democratic Leadership Council and was an early and vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton's failed Presidential campaign.  The selection of Bayh as Obama's running mate could very well be seen as an olive branch to a wing of the Democratic Party which is feeling nastily bruised and more than a little unloved at the moment.  It's all about unity.   

That said, let's see what happens tomorrow.