So rumour has it that Senator Evan Bayh is the hot pick for Barack Obama’s vice-presidential candidate. And hoo boy is this a bad idea. It’s a bad idea for so many reasons: his wishy-washy DLC conservatism, his singleminded hawkishness on foreign policy, his essentially boring nature, the potential for depressing Obama’s activist base by picking a candidate who’s emblematic of Washington-as-usual, the fact that he has a stupid name. But most importantly is this:
Evan Bayh has a really punchable face.
Now, before I continue, I would like to make it perfectly clear that I do not endorse or suggest, in any way, that people should punch Evan Bayh in the face. Even though he’s a DLC Democrat, he probably doesn’t deserve to be punched in the face. (Joe Lieberman probably does, though, if you’re looking for a comparison to work from.)
But look at this happy asshole, will you? The dead-eyed stare mixed with the shit-eating grin mixed with the perfect, corporate hair. Evan Bayh has the face of that bank manager, the one who’s foreclosing on your home, telling you “it’s just business” but deep down, you can tell fucking someone over like this gives him a bit of wood. I’m not saying Evan Bayh is that guy – well, possibly he is, he’s a Washington veteran and that doesn’t come without some deadening of the soul – but he looks like that guy. And you want to punch that guy in the face.
Now that we’ve established that Evan Bayh looks like a guy you would want to punch in the face, the next question to ask is this: do you want to vote for a guy you’d like to punch in the face? Generally speaking, people do not want to vote for face-punch guy. Stephen Harper has an exquisitely punchable face and it’s at least forty percent responsible for the Tories not getting a majority back in the last Canadian federal election. Do you want Evan Bayh’s facepunchability dragging down the Obama campaign?
Because it will do so. Imagine Joe Voter getting into the voting booth. Joe Voter is your typical voter: follows one or two issues closely, relies on the media to tell him about the others, votes more strongly on character issues than he would like to admit. He gets into the booth and thinks, “Well, I like Obama’s positions, but what does it say about the guy that he picked this guy I want to punch in the face for vice-president? I mean, does Obama not want to punch him in the face? Or maybe he does, but he’s a cynical politician who’s willing to work around that because he’s just another cynical politician trolling for votes. I’m not sure which is worse. I’d better vote for John McCain. He’d punch that guy in the face. Maybe shoot him, too.”
Thus, I recommend joining the “no Evan Bayh for VP” Facebook group. I would join, except that I am Canadian and do not wish to imply that my endorsement or lack thereof for a VP candidate should particularly matter. I am just saying: punchable face.
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Ok, so here’s my 2 cents.
Obama wants to make Tom Daschale his VP pick. But Daschale conjures up images of Democratic weakness, capitulation, inter-party squabbling, and eventual catastrophic defeat. Therefore, Obama has to float a name that sounds so much worse that – by the time we’re done face desking ourselves – will leave us jumping for join at anyone else. So he pitches Evan Bayh, evokes a thundering and resounding “HOLYFUCKPLEASEGODNO!” and then quickly retracts his nomination to applause and cries of jubilation from the non-wingnutty sections of his base. Daschale gets slipped on to the ticket and nobody complains.
Obama goes on to win the general by 120 points. The end.
Of course, if McCain picks Romney as his Veep, it won’t matter, because Romney’s Facepunchability factor is OFF THE CHARTS.
I’m hoping it’s not Bayh, if only because that’d be another Republican senator appointed to fill his vacancy. And they’re going to need every Democratic senator they can get, once they get around to flailing Lieberman for his post-lost-primary spite.
Right now, nobody who’s talking knows anything about either candidate’s VP thoughts, and anybody who does know isn’t talking. We go through this every four year, with every pundit and ill-informed bloviator speculating about who’s going to be picked as VP, because they’ve got to justify and/or protect their column inches and TV time, and every four years, not only are the pundits not right, they don’t even have a consensus.
Speculating is fun, but it should also be recognized as essentially pointless. The sole lesson of at least the last twenty years is that the identity of the VP candidate (for a non-incumbent president) is unpredictable.
He looks like a cross between John Edwards and Nathan Petrelli.
I agree that most VP “races” are unpredictable. (The main similarity to an actual race is all the time the veepabili spend jockeying for position.) But it was at least blatantly obvious in retrospect when Dick Cheney, asked by W to head the search for a VP candidate, ended up recommending himself – and getting accepted!
It’s been pretty illustrative of his tenure as VP, really.
Holy shit, this is what the obnoxious law students/ MBA wannabes turn into. THIS. Just looking at that smirk gives me ulcers.
I’m also seconding DarthParadox re: John Edwards X Nathan Petrelli.
I was really hoping for Bill Richardson… Bayh is just NOT the person you want on that ticket.
Now that the Primaries are over, it seems the Democratic subconscious desire to lose is infecting Obama’s campaign. đ
Zifnab, you are a GENIUS!!!! Seriously, Daschle has been with Obama all along and many of his closest people are major players in Obama’s campaign, Daschle has the right mix of inside-DC experience mixed with being out of the Beltway for long enough to be able to tell his head from a hole in the ground, and Daschle could do a good of being Obama’s Lydon Johnson (following the Kennedy formula) in going to the Capitol and helping to push through Obama’s agenda. Also, polls in South Dakota are interesting and Obama only needs to win Kerry states +1 for a victory. I don’t think Obama is seriously considering Bayh as much as he is placating the Beltway elite by looking like he’s considering all the preferred conservative white men that they say he has to consider.
I think if he were planning on going with Bayh, he’d have done so last week when he was in Indiana. He’s also got to be keeping the Senate makeup pretty actively on his mind when making decisions, and while Mitch whosawhatsit of Indiana (I don’t remember his last name; he campaigned as “My Man Mitch” and then disappointed everybody in the state) isn’t a hardline Republican, he’s still not going to select a Democrat to fill Bayh’s spot, as Bayh really only manages to keep his seat through the fact that his last name is Bayh, and that’s as good in Indiana as Kennedy is in Massachusetts.
Bayh’s a feint, and keeping his name active is a way to let the people of Indiana know that he’s taking them seriously. Given the unique breakdown of the state (with the heavily populated Northwest basically operating as a junior Chicago), and the fact that it could swing the whole election, I think his protracted courtship of Bayh amounts mostly to an extended and unique campaign tactic. Which is good. Bayh’s a douchebag, but a blue Indiana would be a pretty significant coup for the Democrats. He’s also a Clinton creature, which means just keeping his name active hits two birds with one stone.
But at this point, I’ll take any bets anyone wants to make on it being Wes Clark. The announcement that the VP would be speaking at the convention on a night named for Clark’s PAC is a pretty serious clue, I think. You don’t name a speech after one guy’s slogan, and then ask someone else to deliver it.
–d
While nothing you write here is ever really in good taste, you’re setting new benchmarks here. What was it, ten hours ago that the DNC chair in Arkansas was murdered? Yeah, face-punchability is a hilarious index.
Ilan, I actually hasn’t heard about the DNC chair in Arkansas until a couple of hours after this was posted, but even if I had, the point of the post is pretty obvious: Evan Bayh is a smarmy schmuck. Suggesting this is a serious call to arms is silly; arguing it’s in bad taste because someone could take it as such is pushing it.
Ilan: Seeing that Evan Bayh is actually a completely different person from Bill Gwatney, I don’t quite grasp exactly how discussing the face-punchability of the one can be construed as disrespectful to the other. Is discussion of politicians indefinitely disallowed until the official statute of limitations on tragedies has expired?
@Dan Solomon: Agree totally. I think Clark brings the most to the table and takes the least away. He wasn’t an excellent campaigner himself during his presidential run, and his ties with the Clintons might be seen as something of a drawback, but his military background stacks nicely against McCain’s rĂ©sumĂ©. Only problem being that he doesn’t bring a swing state into the blue.
“I was really hoping for Bill Richardson⊠Bayh is just NOT the person you want on that ticket.”
I like Richardson, but he seems like a natural born Secretary of State. Sticking him in the VP role seems kind of like a waste.
But I’ll admit to being a fan of the Obama “Justice League” cabinet that’s been floated around since the primary season: Richardson as Secretary of State, Edwards or Clinton as Attorney General, Clark as Secretary of Defense, Gore as Secretary of Energy.
If I thought there was a chance in hell of him accepting the offer, I would say Obama should pick Kucinich.
But Kucinich wont support him.. and after FISA, I’m not sure I would either.
that face really is quite punchable but I think Obama’s charisma will act as a nice shield. he could nominate someone with bleeding facial boils and people would still think the ticket is pretty.
at this point I really don’t have much of an opinion supporting anyone for veep.
all I know is they better not appoint someone who’s more to the right to “balance the ticket” or some BS like that, and I really hope they pick someone who’s big on gay rights issues just to put that firmly onto the platform.
It should be Clark. It must be Clark. There’s really nobody else with a) his stature, b) his willingness to attack McCain, and c) his ability to withstand the fallout of B.
Yes, I remember the fallout of his very correctly pointing out that getting shot down is not a qualification to be President, but I think that it would have permanently silenced anybody else. A respected military leader who has actually won a war or two? Not so much.
I’ve got my fingers crossed for Biden. Clark’s ok, but he’s pretty socially conservative on some issues- like gun control, prayer in schools, the death penalty. Those aren’t big issues for me, so I still like him. But Biden brings all the same pluses to the table, he’s always been a dem, and he helps cancel out some of McCain’s advantages. Some of the guys they’re considering are horrible- this DCL moron, and Nunn, the homophobe. If it’s Nunn, I don’t know that I’d be able to vote for the ticket.
I kind of like the idea of Obama/Nunn just because I think that photographs of the two campaigning together would make me laugh. Is that wrong?
The thing about bringing a swing state into the blue is that it’s a very rare politician who’s so wildly popular in his home state that you can guarantee it- pretty much just Evan Bayh and Bill Richardson have that kind of clout. Bayh’s a poor choice for the punchability mentioned above, as well as a couple of other reasons, and it seems like Obama and Richardson just didn’t have the right kind of chemistry (which is vital to this process, and why Clinton was never going to be on the ticket without a convention showdown)… Which is a shame, as he’d be an excellent choice on paper, both for his credentials and the clout he has in the Southwest. But aside from those two- Biden/Nunn/Kaine/etc wouldn’t guarantee their home states at all.
Regarding Clark’s ties to the Clintons, that’s only a bonus here. He’s not a Clinton, and so he’s not going to galvanize the anti-Clinton movement, but he’d go a long way (as would Bayh) to incorporating that wing of the party into the campaign. Donors who’ve previously been tight with the checkbooks/etc would see it as a concession to them, and that’d only help things. He’s not my first choice (Caroline Kennedy, what), but he’s definitely the best of the frontrunners.
–d
His chin especially would be perfect for punching all up in it.
There is no way both halves of that face belong to the same person. He’s a human cut-and-shut; the whitebread Michael Jackson. If you were to punch him, the superglue would come unstuck and his head would open like a pedal-bin.
I would have liked Webb, but he said he wasn’t interested.
He looks like a cross between John Edwards and Nathan Petrelli.
Ironically, neither of whom I would like to punch in the face. This guy though, hell yes.
I just wikied Evan Bayh as I’ve never heard of him before. Oh oops excuse me I wikied BIRCH Evans Bayh III. 3 generations of people named after a relative of the Oak tree…..He’s got twin sons, Birch IV (nicknamed Beau) and Nicholas Harrison. Yes that’s right…he continued on the tradition of naming boys after a tree….
Please note that Birch Bay is a place in Washington State. So not only is there generations of politicians (his dad ran for president in 1976 against Jimmy Carter. Yes that’s right…a tree lost to a peanut farmer) named after a tree….but a place in Washington State.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_Bay
Buut I don’t think he’ll be Obama’s running mate since apperantly he’s FOR the war while Obama is against.
“Bayh was an early supporter of the Bush administration’s policies on Iraq. On October 2, 2002, Bayh joined President George W. Bush and Congressional leaders in a Rose Garden ceremony announcing their agreement on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War, and was thanked by Bush and Senator John McCain for co-sponsoring the resolution.”
As for his political views. He’s a pro-choicer, voted NO to ban gay marriage, appears to flip flop when it comes to environmental issues “Voted No on prohibiting eminent domain for use as parks or grazing land (Dec 2007). Voted Yes on including oil & gas smokestacks in mercury regulations (Sep 2005). Rated 74% by the LCV, indicating pro-environment votes (Dec 2003). Voted No on confirming Gale Norton as Secretary of Interior (Jan 2001). Voted No on more funding for forest roads and fish habitat (Sep 1999)”.
I’d like him if he wasn’t a flip flopper for the Environmental stuff. But then again…I agree that he could and probably should be punched in the face. And this coming from somebody who likes John Edwards (even IF he cheated on his sick wife….so what? McCain did the same thing and ended up marrying the woman he cheated on his wife with… a woman who’s CEO of one of the largest distributers of Budweiser in North America…)