June 4, 2008--Hillary For Vice President!

I’m in Florida again to help my mother deal with some medical issues. She’ll be as fine as one can be just three weeks short of turning 100. So you can calculate from that and from a glance to your right at my picture that I’m no longer as young as I’d like to be.

I am thus old enough to remember my first trip to Florida more than fifty years ago. To visit an aunt and uncle who fled south from New York seeking opportunity in a place that still had many characteristics of an open frontier.

As Aunt Fannie drove me around some of what was left of my innocence was forever shattered.

We went to Miami Beach and along the causeway that linked it to the mainland I saw a sign along Biscayne Bay that said Colored Beach; and when we stopped for gas and I wanted some water I saw the signs that said For Whites and For Coloreds; and when we lingered on the beach and headed home at dusk and I asked why only colored people were lined up at the bus stops on Collins Avenue Aunt Fannie told me that that was because they were not allowed to remain on Miami Beach after dark.

I didn’t fully understand what this meant but I knew it was not a good thing. I also knew that within my northern family the women who cleaned our apartments were referred to as swartzers. Also not a good thing. We too had our problems with race.

So it was personally fitting and soul-satisfying last night to be here in the South again when Barack Obama secured the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. As the cliché goes, I never thought I’d live to see the day that . . .

He only alluded to the historic nature of this achievement—his as well as ours—which is appropriate since just looking at him is history lesson enough. But the good news for us is that he and we achieved this not because of that, his DNA, but because he turned out to be a remarkable candidate who has the potential to do remarkable things that we desperately need to see realized at home and in the larger world.

Hillary Clinton was not shy about pointing out the historic nature of her own campaign and Obama was more than generous in his many explicit references to its meaning, including to his two young daughters. Though her comments about this and her continuing campaign at times seemed delusional his about her were appropriate, appreciative, and politically smart. He knows he needs to attract her supporters if he is to succeed against John McCain.

So let me at this truly historic moment talk about the history of what will really count—his winning the presidency. Otherwise he will be relegated to footnote status: In 2008, Barack Obama, junior senator from Illinois, became the first African-American to be nominated by one of America’s major political parties blah, blah . . .

If he were white the election would in effect already be over. Did you hear McCain’s speech last night? End of discussion. But he is wonderfully black and I do not have that much innocence left to believe that in itself is not an electoral problem. We’re no longer moving in the realm of Democratic Party maneuverings. We’re already out there in the world that Karl Rove knows so well.

Thus, if we are to be practical now and not become mired in either ideology or spite, for Obama to be elected in November it is essential for him to ask Hillary Clinton to run with him.

The conventional wisdom says that it doesn’t matter that much who the presidential nominee selects to be his running mate. Unless that choice is a Dan Quayle and has the potential to hurt you (though the first George Bush did manage somehow to win—OK he ran against Dukakis and a sea turtle could have beaten him). It is contended by the pundits that vice presidential candidates do not deliver votes and rarely even help carry their own states. But as I have written here conventional wisdom this time around may turn out to be more conventional than wise.

This time around the Democratic candidate may win a few southern states that for decades have gone solidly for Republicans; this time around young people are not going to ignore the election and spend all their spare time polishing up their Facebook sites and posting YouTube clips but rather will not only vote but work their butts off in the Obama campaign; this time around many more than 60 percent of African-Americans eligible to vote will turn out. And this time, if Hillary Clinton is on the ticket, she will in fact deliver votes. Votes that Obama needs to win.

I know well the awful things both Clintons said and did during the past six months—playing the race card, intimating that Obama might be assassinated; making up stories; personally demeaning him--and have railed about them here; but Hillary Clinton did extraordinarily well in the campaign, coming in in a virtual dead heat with Obama, and mobilizing almost as many new and passionate voters as he. Voters very personally connected to her and upon whom, as with him, they could project their own aspirations and fantasies--characteristics essential to all successful candidates.

Thus, to be practical, to win, he needs her.

What, all of you who oppose this idea, is the downside? Those who are most suspicious of her believe that she still wants to be president—of course she does, wouldn’t you--so she would subtly undermine him. How? What would she do? What could she do?

She will demand to be a version of co-president and thus make political trouble for him. What can a VP actually do that is not sanctioned by the president? The last time I checked the Constitution the only independent power the vice president has is to preside over the Senate—which the Democrats will easily control. So if Hillary (or Bill) were to step out of line all a President Obama would have to do is pull the rug out from under whatever it is he assigned her to do. A few of her most fervent supporters would be furious, but would he really have to care? Who would be sitting in the Oval Office?

Is this too cynical? Perhaps. But also practical. Obama himself the other day referred to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about Lincoln—Team of Rivals—and about how after he was elected Lincoln put together a cabinet of his principal political opponents so that they he could draw upon their wisdom and experience and also so that they would be on the inside hopefully helping him rather than on the outside attacking him. This more or less worked and he turned out to be a pretty good president.

Don’t we need a Lincoln now? Things are pretty perilous. Perhaps not as dangerous as during the time of the Civil War but dangerous and complicated enough. Who seems most like Lincoln? McCain? Obama? Easy. Now, let’s be practical and get him elected.

Hillary for Vice President!