Richard Whalen

A vice presidential selection needs careful “vetting” to avoid nightmare situations. In 1968, I led a senior staff effort to persuade our boss Richard Nixon to select California’s newly elected Governor Ronald Reagan. Privately, Nixon, fearful of being overshadowed, rebuffed me with a growl: “He’s just an actor.” Then he alone, without any serious vetting, chose Spiro T. (“Ted”) Agnew , Governor of Maryland, whom he did not know and misperceived as a “Rockefeller moderate.” Vice President Agnew, corrupt to the core, was forced to leave office before Watergate destroyed Nixon himself.

Senator John McCain, a remarkably open Arizonan who has lived a hard, heroic life, faces the same tough, self-revealing choice of a vice president. After receiving counsel from his circle of advisers, he will trust his gut – the combat aviator’s instinct. He will need to choose as his running mate a compatible and experienced centrist conservative, perhaps a younger state governor with executive skills who can help him in very specific ways to win the 270 Electoral College votes he needs.

Others like Pat Toomey, a former Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania and president of Club for Growth, a political action committee that raises money for Republicans who support a lower-tax, limited-government agenda, have their own ideas. Toomey proposed in an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal Rep. Mike Pence from Indiana, among others.

“Over seven years in Congress, the former Chairman of the Republican Study Committee has established himself as a principled, determined conservative,” Toomey wrote adding that McCain would be wise to name a fiscal conservative as his running mate to unite Republicans.

Other Toomey picks are South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Phil Gramm, former Texas Senator and Steve Forbes, CEO of Forbes, Inc. I think Toomey’s whole line-up is a puff-job that just won’t happen.

Mitt Romney, in his first televised interview since he suspended his presidential campaign last month, has just announced that “he would be honored to serve as Senator John McCain’s vice presidential nominee,” reports The New York Post. Some argue that Romney would help McCain among conservatives and lend him credibility on economic issues. I think it will be very difficult if not impossible to erase the memories of their bitter feuding.

Assessed with practical realism, based on the electoral map of the U.S., McCain may have only a couple of real choices. McCain is indebted to Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, because he endorsed McCain on the eve of his state’s primary, writes George F. Will. Florida is a crucial state for Republicans rich in electoral votes (27) but Michael Barone in his Almanac of America Politics writes about Crist’s election: “Here a candidate was attacked for being both gay and for fathering a child out of wedlock.”

Another candidate with impeccable conservative credentials writes Will, is Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, 60, who served as a political director in the Reagan White House and as National Party Chairman 1993-1997. Other prospects include center-right Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, twice elected in a state trending Democratic, South Dakota’s Senator John Thune and lest we forget, Mike Huckabee whose recent praise of McCain is considered a thinly veiled bid for the No. 2 spot.

Now let’s go way out. Paul Bedard in his “Washington Whispers” published in the U.S. News says that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is all the buzz in conservative circles – kind of a 7-Eleven for the GOP – “a fashionable Republican woman, African-American, over-the-top smart and a very able diplomat.”

My own idea about who would be the best candidate in an ideal world – Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. The Golden State is the biggest prize with 55 electoral votes. “Ah-nold,” is the media savvy, Kennedy-connected action hero, who could be the next star in the Republican Party’s dominant presidential galaxy.

Yes, I know, Schwarzenegger, who was born in Austria, is blocked by Article 2, Section 1, and Clause 5 of the Constitution, which reads: “No person except a natural born citizen … shall be eligible to the office of president.” Proponents of a simple, overdue change in the Constitution argue that 700 immigrants in uniform have been awarded the Medal of Honor since the Civil War and well over 60,000 now serve in our military.

McCain, at 72, would be confident enough to form a true “team” with the charismatic Schwarzenegger, 61, who needs federal government experience and visibility to step up to the presidency. And Republicans love their predictable seniority ladder

Despite Schwarzenegger’s incredible voter approval rating in California, this is a long shot to end all long shots. Let’s have a weekend vote by readers on changing the Constitution, even though the chances of doing that for this election are nil: how many yeas; how many nays?