Hillary As VP? NO!

I submitted the following comment to Paul Krugman's New York Times blog entry. It was refused. I highly respect Paul Krugman as an economist. That will not change. I am less enamored of his political instincts. Here is my response to his call for a Hillary Clinton vice presidency:

There's no way Hillary Clinton should be offered the vice-presidency.

1) Bill's finances are too big a liability to take a chance on. We don't know who's donated to his foundation, we don't know how much, and we don't know what interests they represent. Saddling an Obama candidacy with that potent a black box makes no sense whatsoever.

2) The Democratic Party would be rewarding and lending credence to an insurgency that has fought the current officialdom tooth-and-nail since it was elected in 2004. All the work that has brought the party to this point would be subsumed by infighting no matter the outcome in November. Inviting the DLC into the tent when they've stayed out voluntarily for so long makes no sense.

3) Hillary Clinton has proven herself a horrible campaigner on the national level. The Democrats need a running mate they can set-and-forget. That ain't Hillary. That ain't Bill. Also, she's been running against fellow Democrats. She's been granted an extraordinary amount of deference--despite what her supporters say--and the Republicans are not going to grant her that deference. Saddling Obama with those negatives would be unfair.

4) The assertion that Obama "needs" Hillary on the ticket to unite the party is a specious one. Eighty per-cent of the electorate already thinks the country is going the wrong way. McCain is having trouble keeping his own party happy. The Republican Party can't raise any money. The economy is in free-fall, Iraq is a debacle, and our basic freedoms are under siege. And the rising fuel prices? That's the oil companies betting on the outcome of the election: They're squeezing every ounce of cash they can from the market in anticipation of more stringent regulation.

Giving her the vice-presidential nomination would be of more benefit to Hillary Clinton than it would be to the party or to Barack Obama. Bad idea. Period.