Paul Ryan, GOP Vice Presidential Nominee: Some Thoughts

FHQ will not go all long form here (or will try not to anyway). Plenty of others have more than adequately gotten the ball rolling in reaction to the Mitt Romney campaign's decision to tap Wisconsin representative, Paul Ryan, as the governor's running mate.

First thing's first: Let's check the speculation at the door here, shall we? I think we can all agree that the Ryan selection will have an impact. Subtract him and add, say, Tim Pawlenty and you get a potentially different outcome long term. That's the fun part, right? Treating this like the NBA Trade Machine. You can trade and trade and trade parts until you subjectively/hypothetically improve your team's chances of success. But other than gaining some insight into what the campaign is thinking, I don't know that the risk/reward calculus is all that fruitful an exercise. Hindsight is always 20/20 on these things. The one rule to always remember on VP selection is exactly what George W. Bush said about presidential debates, "I don't think you can ever win them, but you darn sure can lose them." In other words, these things are always "do no harm".

Instead of the calculus many are talking about then, let's talk about what we know. What data do we have?

1. Who is Paul Ryan?
A majority of Americans don't know. Those that do know Ryan are slightly more likely to view him unfavorably. That means that the race is on over the next two weeks -- before the Republican Convention kicks off in Tampa (and perhaps afterward) -- to define Ryan in much the same way that the campaigns' efforts have been about defining Romney this summer. Republicans will want to paint the Wisconsin representative as the visionary their standard bearer made the then-unknown pick to be in a recent NBC interview. Oppositely, Democrats will both want to tie Ryan to the frame they have attempted to construct around Romney (well off and out of touch with ordinary Americans) and to link Romney to the House Budget Committee chairman's controversial budget plan (which they view as a liability for the Republicans).

Just know that this attention on Ryan will be short-lived.  He is a number two and unless the Romney campaign roll out is gaffe-prone and rife with problems, the attention will ultimately shift back to the person at the top of the ticket and the race will, in Holbrook's terms, revert to its Romney equilibrium.

2. VP selection bounce
From FHQ's perspective, the best thing about the Ryan announcement occurring when it did is that the race will have a full two weeks before the Republican Convention in which to look at polls. That's a plus for a couple of reasons. First, we should see an uptick in polling starting now. Formerly risk-averse polling outlets will have a reason to go into the field: to test Ryan's impact. Secondly and unlike the two 2008 selections, we will have some time between the VP announcement and the conventions in which to -- admittedly only partially -- tease out the impact of each event. Both the Biden and Palin selections happened on the eves of their respective conventions. And in the Palin case that made it very difficult to discern whether or how much of McCain's early September jump in the polls was convention effect or VP effect.

As Jonathan Bernstein rightly pointed out, this VP bounce is a built-in part of the process. The structural impact of a vice presidential selection is approximately two points nationally. On the state level, however, that may be felt slightly differently. It isn't necessarily uniform across states. This is particularly true of the vice presidential nominee's home state. The Palin selection, for example, turned scantily-polled Alaska from a surprisingly competitive state to a rock-red state (a position the Last Frontier would likely have ended up in on election day anyway). Ryan's Wisconsin has been a comfortably blue state (Lean Obama throughout), but that consistency may bely the fact that the state hovers close to the breaking point in the FHQ metric between Lean and Toss Up (Obama) state. This could also potentially aid the Republican ticket in other midwest/blue-collar states.

But again, let's wait and see how the polls react to that instead of speculating.

Regardless, Romney will enjoy something of a bump out of the Ryan rollout, but we'll have to wait and see how exactly that manifests itself and where (in terms of location and groups of voters).

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FHQ Reading Room (9/23/09)

Is it too early to be talking about 2010 congressional predictions?

Tom Holbrook says yes (based on the data).

...and Charlie Cook responds that they aren't predictions; they're warnings.

FHQ's take: I love arguments based on semantics. Seriously though, who doesn't take what Cook is writing as a prediction? The bigger question is whether those reading it take them literally or of their own volition add the caveat that conditions may change between now and November 2010.


Is race an underlying factor in the opposition to Obama's health care reform agenda?

There has been an interesting (political science-based) discussion of this stemming from Jimmy Carter's recent comments.

John Sides weighs in here. And Seth Masket here and here. All are well worth reading.

FHQ's take: As spurious relationships go, this one is the spurious-est. Just because there is a high correlation between ice cream sales and swimming pool drownings doesn't mean that one is driving the other. Both are driven by rising prices. Obama was correct in saying that race wasn't the "overriding" factor and Bill Clinton (as Seth points out) said it even better by mentioning that those opposing Obama would oppose him if he was a white Democrat too.


Who tweets more? Congressional Democrats or Republicans?

Apparently it's Republicans. Additionally, here's a great site that aggregates the tweets of all members of Congress.

FHQ's take: Bookmark Tweet Congress.

What are you waiting for?

Bookmark it now. Go on.


The Dos and Don'ts of Vice Presidential Selection: A Guide for Presidential Nominees

John Edwards' continuing story got Andrew Gelman thinking which, in turn, got Jonathan Bernstein thinking.

FHQ's take: The result is a pretty good guide to VP selection. There has been a certain amount of chatter out there in terms of Republicans selecting the "none of the above option" in terms of those prospective candidates being polled with 2012 in mind. Makes you wonder if Huckabee or Romney would be potential running mates for someone like Palin or Pawlenty (I mean, if the Republican primary voters opt to go in a different direction in 2012 and both Romney and Huckabee still have political careers after all is said and done.).


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The Links (8/30/08): Sarah Palin/GOP Convention Edition

Who is Sarah Palin? The race is on to find out.

Chris Cillizza at The Fix weighs in as do the folks over at The Caucus.

The Caucus also describes the battle to define the Alaska governor...by both parties.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight provides a glimpse into the early polling being done on McCain's VP selection and the breakdown among men and women is surprising.

Here's the speech from her first appearance with McCain following the announcement.

----
With the Republican convention set to kick off on Monday -- weather permitting -- the talk has shifted from the bounce the Democrats got or may have gotten to projections of how well the GOP will do in the polls after their own gathering.


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On GOP Conventions and VP Selections

What, during the Democratic Convention?

Yeah, let's look at what's ahead for and what's in store from the Republicans. First let's look at the St. Paul convention next week. The GOP convention is already under attack, and not just from Democrats. Tropical Storm/Hurricane Gustav is heading into the Gulf of Mexico and forecasts have it making landfall sometime early next week -- during the Republican's convention -- in the New Orleans area. Now, I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure remembering Hurricane Katrina was not at the top of the list of things to be highlighted by the Republicans next week. So already, even before the convention kicks off, there have been, now, two things that have "gone wrong" for the Republican Party. First, this developing story in the Gulf isn't helping the party of Lincoln stay on message, and second was the news that the GOP is basically doing nothing to combat frontloading ahead of the 2012 election. Now, one of those is obviously a bit higher up on the priority list at the moment. People won't truly be paying attention to the frontloading thing for another three and a half years, but given the mission of this site, FHQ finds it necessary to include it here.

Already the weather has claimed the speaking spot allotted to Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal, who has pre-emptively declared a state of emergency in his state. That's a blow to the party because the Republicans now miss out on an opportunity to show off an up-and-coming presence within their party, someone who was mentioned as a possible running mate for McCain.

Obviously, this is an unpredictable situation, but it is worth tracking as we approach the Republicans' turn in the spotlight.

----

The second topic I want to cover is the GOP VP announcement that is likely to come either today or tomorrow. Well, I suppose McCain has the option of doing it on Saturday as well, but as someone at a football school, I question the wisdom behind timing that announcement on the first full day of the college football season, not to mention a holiday weekend. Those issues aside, who is going to be the addition to the Republican ticket? Much of the recent buzz -- FHQ included -- has centered on Mitt Romney, but in the wake of the Biden selection and the Democratic convention, has that sentiment changed? David Brooks on PBS's coverage of the events last night in Denver said that Biden's performance and the course of the Democrats' convention had put the onus on McCain to shake things up with a Lieberman, or someone similar, selection. So we have three basic questions here:

1) When will the decision be announced? Today? Tomorrow? Some other time?

2) Who will it be?

3) Have the Biden selection and the Democratic convention given McCain reason to reconsider an already made choice or to alter the thought process on the matter altogether?

The comments section awaits for not only answers to those questions, but your thoughts on last night's proceedings in Denver.

H/t to Daniel for alerting me to the weather implications for the Republican convention yesterday.

NOTE: Also, I'm going to try and add in the 2000 data on the third party post from the other day. If I get to that, I'll have something up later in the day.

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Thoughts?

After the Chet Edwards, last-minute extravaganza (one that had me wondering about how an Obama-Edwards ticket would look: Edwards? Why did he choose someone who cheated on his cancer-stricken wife?), Obama opted for Joe Biden. The Delaware senator does what the pundits have said Obama may need to do with his vice presidential choice, mainly shore up some of those perceived foreign policy and experience weaknesses. And this one doesn't feel like a safe pick as Evan Bayh would have. Biden has a personality and enough experience to actually hold his own on Wednesday night, a night when Bill Clinton is also speaking at the Democratic Convention. The drawback? Well, Biden suffers from occasional foot-in-the-mouth disease, but hey, he's the VP not the nominee, right?

My other thought on a morning where I received the news via radio (and not the middle of the night text message--ah, technology) is that the choice of Biden seems an awful lot like Bush's selection of Cheney eight years ago. Yeah, some readers aren't going to like me drawing that parallel, but it is at least partially true. In Biden, Obama has someone with some experience. Bush got that by picking Cheney as well. But with that experience, comes someone realitively longer in the tooth than the actual nominee. Biden is 65 and would be 73 if Obama makes it through two terms, not an age that we often see someone running for president successfully. [McCain may prove me wrong on this, but since we're in the midst of a hypothetical, bear with me.] In that sense, Biden could represent a VP choice who ultimately does not have the ambition to aspire to the presidency. Yes, I'm talking about a guy who has run for president twice -- in 1988 and 2008 -- but by that point in his life things may be different. Yes, this is certainly speculative, but when you do what I do you look for these sorts of openings, like 2008 repeating itself on 2016. By that I mean an open race for both nominations with no one from the current administration running. And who among us doesn't secretly wish for a similar sort of race?

With that, what are your thoughts and opinions of Obama's choice?

PS: I'll be back later in the day with a look at the August trends, so we can get a sense of where they are prior to the conventions.


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On VP Predictions: Timing and Choices

The roots of a good discussion have already begun in the post I put up yesterday regarding McCain opting for Mitt Romney as his running mate. Both Jack and Scott have added some interesting links that, when taken together, point toward Obama making his selection known sometime between Wednesday morning and Friday -- prior to a Springfield event on Saturday to introduce the new ticket.

Scott has already weighed in. He sees a Friday announcement. At this point, I'm hesitant to put in my two cents, having already missed once. However, I'll say that Thursday morning will be when Obama makes the call. [See, I'm still averaging the difference.] That gives them a bit more exposure time, but not enough to set off a backlash.

And what say you, loyal FHQ readers? Lurkers you too can have an anonymous place in the spotlight. The comments section is there for both predictions on when the announcement(s) will be made and who will be named running mate -- on both sides.

[UPDATE]: Check out Scott's comment below for some Sebelius speculation (via our good friends over at DemConWatch.).


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The New Ohio Poll and McCain's VP Choice

With Public Policy Polling's release of a new poll in Ohio last night, the current state of the presidential race took on a much closer feel. Let's look at yesterday's Electoral College Spectrum with that poll incorporated to get a better feel for the dynamics as they now stand.

The Electoral College Spectrum*
HI-4 (7)**	WA-11 (165)	PA-21 (264/295)	FL-27 (369/196)	LA-9 (67)
VT-3 (10)	MN-10 (175)	CO-9*** (273/274)	NC-15 (384/169)	ID-4 (58)
RI-4 (14)	DE-3 (178)	OH-20 (293/265)	SC-8 (154)	NE-5 (54)
MD-10 (24)	OR-7 (185)	NV-5 (298/245)	SD-3 (146)	WY-3 (49)
IL-21 (45)	NJ-15 (200)	VA-13 (311/240)	TX-34 (143)	AR-6 (46)
CT-7 (52)	IA-7 (207)	ND-3 (314/227)	GA-15 (109)	TN-11 (40)
NY-31 (83)	WI-10 (217)	IN-11 (325/224)	MS-6 (94)	KY-8 (29)
ME-4 (87)	NM-5 (222)	MT-3 (328/213)	WV-5 (88)	AL-9 (21)
CA-55 (142)	MI-17 (239/316)	MO-11 (339/210)	AZ-10 (83)	UT-5 (12)
MA-12 (154)	NH-4 (243/299)	AK-3 (342/199)	KS-6 (73)	OK-7 (7)
*Follow the link for a detailed explanation on how to read the Electoral College Spectrum. **The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, McCain won all the states up to and including New Hampshire (all Obama's toss up states, but Michigan), he would have 299 electoral votes. Both candidates numbers are only totaled through their rival's toss up states. In those cases, Obama's number is on the left and McCain's is on the right in italics. ***Colorado is the state where Obama crosses (or McCain would cross) the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. That state is referred to as the victory line.

Wait, that looks exactly like yesterday's ECS. It does. That tie in the Buckeye state made the margin between Obama and McCain smaller there, but Ohio still slightly favors Obama. More importantly though, Colorado, Nevada and Ohio have inched closer to McCain of late, and those three states along with Virginia are the states upon which this race appears to be hinging at the moment. If either candidate gets all their current states outside of that four state block, they will need some combination of those four to break 270 electoral votes.

Here's where McCain's choice of a running mate comes into play. The Arizona senator could play offense in Colorado and Nevada by tapping Mitt Romney as his vice presidential nominee. The former Massachusetts governor would also help in his home state of Michigan. That potentially puts Obama in a real bind. McCain would be on the offensive in those two western states and Michigan and would have to play defense to hold on to Virginia, but wouldn't even "need" Ohio. Granted, if you look at the Spectrum, ceding Ohio and swinging Michigan to the right would cost McCain three electoral votes, but it would help him squeak by in the electoral college with a 271-267 advantage. And hey, Ohio is trending the Arizona senator's way.

Looking at the electoral college breakdown and vice presidential selection in that light makes me second-guess the pundits' thoughts about McCain's pro-choice running mate trial balloon in the Weekly Standard last week. Did that comment indicate Ridge and/or Lieberman or was it referring to someone who has moderated his views on the abortion question, Mitt Romney? There are certainly other issues surrounding Romney, but would his religious background affect the ticket enough to swing any states Obama's way? My first impression is that it would not, though some states (especially in the South) would be closer than they have been in the past. In the end, that is a razor-thin electoral college margin, but at this point, it looks like Romney may be able to do the most damage to Obama and the Democrats in the electoral college. What he brings to the table, is what helps McCain the most in the electoral college.

This swoon period will end for Obama with the effect the combination of a VP selection and the convention helping. Will that effect be muted by the GOP convention that follows on the heels of the Democrats', though? Suddenly, August looks to be a challenging month for the second consecutive cycle for the Democrats. If the race looks tied after whatever bounce the GOP convention gives McCain, then the debates will likely play a crucial role in deciding who will win this election in November.

Speaking of convention bumps, Thomas Holbrook has a post up on his blog now that looks at the effects of past conventions and glances ahead to the upcoming conventions.


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On VP Announcement Timing and Graphic Naming -- Some Housekeeping

There are a couple of unresolved issues that I've been meaning to address but haven't found the time to do so this week.

1) Graphic Naming
I promised that I'd put the names for the new electoral college graphic up for a vote, but in true democratic fashion have tentative adopted a name -- the victory line -- for the state where 270 electoral votes are achieved. This seems strange without exhibit A, so here it is:

The Electoral College State Rankings
HI-4	MA-12	NH-4	FL-27	KS-6
VT-3	MN-10	PA-21*	AK-3	ID-4
RI-4	DE-3	NV-5	SC-8	NE-5
MD-10	OR-7	OH-20	SD-3	WY-3
IL-21	NJ-15	VA-13	TX-34	AR-6
CT-7	IA-7	ND-3	GA-15	TN-11
NY-31	WI-10	IN-11	MS-6	KY-8
CA-55	NM-5	MT-3	WV-5	AL-9
ME-4	MI-17	MO-11	AZ-10	UT-5
WA-11	CO-9	NC-15	LA-9	OK-7
* Pennsylvania is the state where Obama crosses (or McCain would cross) the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election.

There are a couple of things at stake here: the name of the graphic in its totality and the name of the state in yellow. The latter has been discussed a bit more than the former, but here are the choices so far for each:

The Graphic Choices:
a) Electoral College State Rankings
b) Electoral College Spectrum
c) ??????

The Yellow State:
a) The Cutting Edge
b) The Breaking Point (Yeah, I'll include this because I've been using it out of habit lately.)
c) The Finish Line
d) Checkers
e) The Victory Line
f) ??????

The comments section is open for voting and further suggestions. I think I'll cut this off at 5p this afternoon and make a decision then. If there are additional names suggested that catch my fancy, I'll put them in above in an update.

2) VP Announcement Timing
Last week's post and subsequent comments discussion had readers speculating on when Obama would announce his vice presidential selection. Here's where that ended up:

Allen: Aug. 14-19
Josh: Aug. 4-5
Rob: Aug. 5-7
Scott: Aug. 7

Mean Date: Aug. 8-9
Median Date: Aug. 6-7

Allen pretty much nailed this one, saying that Obama would vacation first and then name his selection. I'm still moderately surprised that the Obama campaign didn't move prior to the Olympics (He's still got a few hours before the opening ceremonies are televised on tape delay here though. Online video coverage doesn't kick off until 6:30p EST and then it is mostly just badminton, shooting and handball. I'm not saying Obama's going to announce within that window. I'm just saying.). Had I (and Scott and Rob) bought into the momentum of Obama's VP red herrings the last two weeks? No, not the increased chatter among the chattering class, but that it had combined with fairly specific speculation --centered on one person each time -- and a timing constraint represented by the games in Beijing. Last week it was Tim Kaine. This week it was Evan Bayh.

I'm still less concerned with who the choices are on either side than I am with how these things are being timed. So, now that we know Obama's choice likely won't come this week, when does everyone think these choices will be made...now? Allen has won phase one and is owed several rounds of drinks because of it. There are now 19 days between today and when the vice presidential selection speaks at the Democratic convention on August 27. When will Obama move on this and why is that time optimal? Feel free to weigh in in the comments section.


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A Game of Vice Presidential Chicken

The clock is ticking on both presidential candidates to select running mates and there is even less for them than you might think. Sure the Democratic convention kicks off one month from today, leaving the candidates just over four weeks to make a selection. However, sixteen of those days will be devoted to the Olympic games and may not be the most opportune time to make such an announcement. With the games starting two weeks from today, both McCain and Obama will have to either fit their decisions into that two week window or make an announcement during the Olympic period.

The consensus is that Obama will make the first move because the Democratic convention is first. McCain is at a disadvantage here because the GOP convention gets underway just a week after the Democrats' gathering in Denver. In other words he can't fall back on the time between conventions as a viable time in which to make his VP selection public. Viewed from this angle, reports of McCain potentially making his decision this week make that possibility seem less farfetched (going before Obama, perhaps would make it more unusual).

So we have a predicted order of selections, and the timing has yet to be determined, but is severly constrained at this point. Let's talk about the Olympics as an obstacle to these decisions (And the games are not supposed to be political.) for a moment. During the last two cycles the Olympics had no real effect on vice presidential selection. In 2000, the Sydney games were not until mid-September, after both conventions and both VP selections. In 2004, Bush already had his man in Cheney and Kerry had countered that soon after he wrapped up the Democratic nomination by selecting John Edwards. But even though, the Olympics didn't play a role in the VP decisions in 2004 they may have had an effect on the presidential race. And I haven't seen this discussed anywhere. However, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth released their controversial ad on August 5, 2004, just eight days prior to Athens games commencing. Now, that leaves three weeks, one before the games and two during, for that to percolate before Kerry could/would effectively respond (He did file a complaint with the FEC during the games.). Did those games stand in the way of an effective response though? And what does that mean for the VP selections to come?

Well, the Olympics are a distraction and just enough of a distraction to allow for something underground like the Swift Boat ad to spread. However, something like a VP announcement would likely be viewed as a political move during an apolitical event. So while the Swift Boat Veterans may have been able to get away with it, McCain (or Obama) likely would not. It isn't that the games would overshadow the announcement so much that the announcement would be a move contrary to the overarching tenor of the games.

If Obama is supposed to go first then, he may be playing a game of brinksmanship with McCain and his campaign now. To stretch the decision out this far either forces McCain to move first or decide at a bad time (during the games or the Democratic convention). Nate Silver covered this earlier in the week when the report of McCain's imminent announcment surfaced, but didn't include the Olympics angle. But McCain is up against it on this one. Obama is holding all the cards and, if he is the one to move first, could hold them until the eve of the games. The flipside, of course, is that Obama forces a move out of McCain but leaves himself little time to respond or respond effectively. As adept as the Obama campaign has seemed though, it would appear unlikely that they would be playing such a game of chicken without some contingency plans. There are only so many rabbits McCain can pull out of that VP hat.

[Update: Chris Cillizza over at The Fix has more on the implications of the Olympics on VP selection.]

Thanks to Rob Shewfelt for getting the ball rolling on this one in the comments to the Florida post (linked below.).


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