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by Frank James
Sen. Hillary Clinton this morning evidently indicated she was open to the possibility of what many Democrats have called a dream ticket, in which she and her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, run together, she presumably heading the ticket.
She made her comments on CBS News’ “Early Show,” one of the several morning shows she did today as she took a victory lap following her wins in the Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island primaries.
This is how the Associated Press reported what she said:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton is hinting at the possibility of sharing the Democratic presidential ticket with Barack Obama, but says voters still have to decide the party nominee.
Clinton says: “That may be where this is headed, but of course we have to decide who is on the top of ticket. I think the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me.”
Obama is playing down his losses Tuesday in three out of four primaries, including the battlegrounds of Texas and Ohio. He stresses that he is still ahead of Clinton in the delegate count.
In appearances on the morning talk shows, both Democrats say they have the credentials to go head to head with Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain.
The two rivals are very close on most of the major issues so this wouldn’t be an oil and water mix, at least on that score.
Despite all the heated rhetoric and the hostility of the warring political camps, such a match wouldn’t be the first time two such rivals buried the hatchet for the sake of party unity.
The best most recent example of this would be the ticket shared in 1980 by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the latter man having famously ridiculed the former’s supply-side economic ideas as “voodoo economics.”
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In 1960, there wasn’t a lot of love lost between the John F. Kennedy people and the Lyndon B. Johnson either. But they made it work.
So it wouldn’t be unprecedented. And it would certainly hold out the chance of unifying what could otherwise be a very divided party.
One possible problem and it’s not insignificant. Clinton has been campaigning for the better part of a year on the premise that she’s got to the experience to be president and Obama doesn’t.
After undermining Obama’s experience and saying he doesn’t measure up for the job, how could she then turn around and choose him as her veep who would be only a heartbeat away from the Oval Office? That’s a pivot that would be hard for even Michael Jordan in his prime to pull off. Then there’s the elephant in the room, or better yet, the Big Dawg in the room. What would a White House with a President Hillary Clinton, a former President Bill Clinton and a Vice President Barack Obama look like? How would it work? Could it work?
This would truly be a dream ticket, especially for the Washington media.
Imagine the kinds of stories about policy and personality clashes that would emanate from such a White House. Imagine the leaks as the Obama people tried to advance their man and the Clinton people tried to put him back in his place.
Imagine a high-wattage politician like Obama upstaging the lesser wattage Clinton.
We’re talking a reality TV show that could make “Survivor” look tame. We’re talking journalistic nirvana.