"What chance does a five-foot-seven billionaire Jew who's divorced really have of becoming president?" -Michael Bloomberg.

Possible VP Candidates

What are the qualifications for Mike's ideal running mate? Here's a point system based on the assumption that Mike might want to balance out his weaknesses.

- Recognized foreign policy /military expert (+10 points)

- Political party: Long-standing Democrat (-3 points); Republican with ties to Bush (-10 points); Republican critic of the Bush administration (+5 points)

- Name recognition: Well-known by Time Magazine readership (+5 points)

- Religion: Non-Christian (-10 points)

- Geography: An extremely popular figure in a single large state (+10 points), Northeastener (-5 points)

- Beltway Insider: Has worked in D.C. since 2004 (-5 points)

Possibilies:

1. Gen. Colin Powell: 20 points, assuming he is credibly anti-Bush. Role in selling the Iraq war might be show-stopper; but he has apologized and says it is a blot on his record.

2. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA): 15 points, if he is popular in California. The fact that he might not be constitutionally eligible to serve, he may be able to appear on a ballot. And what could be more "outsider" than someone who has to sue to overturn a silly constitional amendment to serve his country?

3. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.). 15 points. 5 points for foreign policy and 10 if he can carry Virginia.

4. Gen. Wes Clark. 12.5 points, some name recognition from the People Magazine set.

5. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). 12 points. Would most likely have similar campaign themes regarding cleaning up Washington.

6. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE). 5 points if he is recognized as a half of a foreign policy expert. He seems interested in the job.

Who else scores points?

1 comment:

3YC said...

Thanks for having us over last night! I was thinking about how you could drive more traffic to your site. The Washington Post has a feature on all of their articles where they track who has mentioned their articles in blogs. For example, this article on Bloomberg (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/30/AR2007063000859.html) was blogged about by these blogs (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/30/AR2007063000859_Technorati.html).
I am sure they get a lot of new traffic through WaPo--at least I have checked out some blogs that way!