My Veep Pick

My money is on Kaine. I just watched him on Meet the Press, and he's confident, down-to-earth, and most of all, he looks like an all-American guy. He grew up in a blue-collar household (in Minnesota), did missionary work in Hondouras, went to Harvard Law. Similar in a lot of ways to Obama's biography, which I think is a sign that their values overlap.

There are two questions Obama has to consider in choosing his running mate: 1) who am I comfortable with and can work well with? and 2) who will help me win? On the first question, Kaine seems to be a good fit. He's a non-Washingtonian, which plays into Obama's change message.

On the second question, the key barrier Obama has to surmount to win is to convince middle-class whites that "he's a guy like me; a guy who understands me". And I think the image of Kaine and Obama next to each other does that better than any of the other short-list candidates (Biden, Bayh, Rendell, Sebelius). Kaine looks like he could be a wrestler, or a truck driver. He emblemizes regular mainstream America, and provides a counter to Obama's perceived exoticism.

Anyway, that's my bet. We'll see in a couple days who the pick is.