PREDICTIONS: The Vice Presidential Picks

"Veepstakes".. it's the parlour game all political junkies are playing at this time - trying to guess who the Democratic and Republican nominees will be. For the most part, those high paid pundits on TV and radio are hedging their bets - giving only a short list - at best. Since, I doubt either candidate will make their final choice for many weeks, it takes a brave person to jump ahead of these guys and boldly predict exactly what they will do before they even know it themselves. I am that brave person.

I have been trying to get into the mind of Barack Obama and John McCain to determine how they would go about choosing a running mate. What factors would they think were important, how do they make decisions, what messages are they trying to send, what electoral advantage are they jockeying to get .. all these factors went into me predicting what they nominees will do. Here goes..

I predict that Barack Obama will make a very good choice by selecting Mark Warner of Virginia as his running mate.

There will be a lot of reasons for this choice. Mark Warner is young, a former governor and from Virginia, a swing state in this election. He’s a family man with a strong Christian background. He is very smart and was a capable and popular chief executive of his state. He is respected by the activists as well as the old standard bearers of the Democratic party. He also connected well with many Republicans and Independents in his state and did well with voters in the Appalachian Mountain region where Obama will need some help. These are all excellent qualifications for Warner to be Obama's VP choice. However, the most important reason he will get the nod, in my opinion, is Barack Obama insistence on a “no drama” operation. Warner is a cool cat, very serious, smart and talented. He is post-partisan and rejects the divisive politics that Obama has been running against. His personality and his politics blend perfectly with that of Barack Obama making him the best choice as his running mate.

John McCain is an entirely different story. His campaign seems at a loss as to how to take the shine off his young, fresh opponent. Therefore, I believe, he will miscalculate and make the poor decision of choosing Bobby Jindal of Louisiana as his GOP Vice Presidential running mate.

So far in this campaign McCain seems to be trying to mimic Obama's strengths in an attempt to weaken his opponents message and image. He has adapted a new slogan “A leader we can believe in” that is a take off on the one Obama has used for over a year “Change we can believe in”. McCain has had his website redesigned to look like Obama's and he portrays himself as much of a change agent as Obama. He seems to be trying to run a "copy cat" campaign.

Keeping with this misguided strategy, McCain will make the foolish choice of Governor Bobby Jindal for his running mate. To be painfully blunt, The biggest reason McCain will make this choice is that Jindal is young (36) and dark skinned - just like Obama! I believe McCain thinks this will peel off some support from Barack. It won't. Not only is McCain's strategy to confuse the differences between the two campaigns ridiculous and doomed to failure, I can think of no voting block that would be more inclined to vote for McCain because of the inclusion of Jindal. It is a plan without a purpose (also, it would be an insult to Jindal to propel him to the VP slot under this scenario). Yes, Jindal is a governor (has been for a few months now) and a strict conservative, but just like when Bob Dole tried to go "young and right" with Jack Kemp, McCain will miss with his attempt to generate excitement with this unorthodox pick.

McCain should actually pick Mike Huckabee. You all know I’m a big fan of his, but from a strictly strategic point of view, Huckabee would be a smart choice. He is the only person I know of that can compete rhetorically with the Obama campaign (which John McCain and Jindal clearly cannot). Huckabee beat McCain in the South even after McCain was all but the presumptive nominee, and he maintains strong support in that region. McCain may feel that the South is already locked up for the GOP but I do not. Huckabee could hold the base that McCain needs to have any chance of winning in November.

Now, Huckabee has said some nutty things over the past months and years, but I’m pretty sure McCain himself will corner the market this Fall on uncomfortable sound bites. As much as I like him, as a Democrat I also fear Mike Huckabee. He is very smart, shrewd and could, with a crafty plan and his sliver tongue, find a way to score an upset in November. A long serving governor, Mike Huckabee, in my opinion, could handle the job of President if he were to have to serve.

So there you have it. It will be Obama/Warner vs. McCain/Jindal. Of course, this far in advance anything can happen and I may have to revise these picks later. Warner is currently running for Senate and would have to be convinced to drop out of that race and Jindal could (and should) take himself out of the picture to focus on the needs of his new job. But unless and until something extraordinary happens I will make this "earliest in the blogosphere" prediction of the candidates choices for running mates.