For What It's Worth

The favorite game these days among those who write about American politics is guessing who the vice presidential candidates will be. To give myself just as much chance to be wrong as anyone else, I will jump into the game. And I won't even hedge my bets with a list; I will make one prediction per party:

Republican: Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota
Democrat: Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio

Pawlenty, 47, has been governor since 2003. He received his bachelor's and law degrees from the University of Minnesota. He practiced law, and was elected to the state House of Representatives, becoming its majority leader.

He is a proven vote-getter in a Democratic-leaning state. In 2006, he garnered national attention by narrowly winning re-election amid the mid-term Democratic landslide. He lost a high-profile veto override battle over a gasoline tax increase, but has generally been seen as being effective in dealing with large Democratic majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

Both parties seem constantly to be chasing after ghosts. Democrats are looking for the next Jack Kennedy and Republicans for the next Ronald Reagan. I see some Reaganesque qualities in Pawlenty. He manages to put forward a conservative agenda while retaining the support of moderate voters. And he's a very good, if not great, communicator.

Minnesota's total of 10 electoral votes, if Pawlenty could deliver them to the Republican column, is not very high. But Minnesota has the longest current streak of voting Democratic in presidential elections, so turning that around would be a significant gain for the GOP.

Strickland, 66, was elected governor in 2006, ending a 16-year Republican hold on that office. He received his bachelor's degree from Asbury College and, among other advanced degrees, a PhD in psychology from the University of Kentucky.

He practiced and taught psychology, and was briefly a Methodist minister. He served in the U.S. House for a total of 12 years in two different periods.

He is toward the right of his party on some issues. That fits in with a major theme of the 2006 midterm elections for the Democrats, which was regaining the so-called "Reagan Democrats", traditional Democratic voters who had become disenchanted with some of the policies of that party, and had begun voting Republican in the 1980s. Senator Webb of Virginia is another 2006 winner who is spoken of that way.

If Strickland can deliver Ohio, he will of course be very valuable to Sen. Obama. Ohio is considered to be the state that decided the 2004 presidential election. With 20 electoral votes, Ohio is one of the larger states. In every election since 1964, the candidate who carries Ohio has won the election.

It was traditionally considered necessary to have geographic balance between a party's presidential and vice presidential candidates. But the successful Democratic tickets of 1992 and 1996, with candidates from Arkansas and Tennessee, had no more geographic balance than an Illinois-Ohio ticket would have in 2008.

CLARIFICATION: Minnesota has the longest current streak of voting Democratic of any state. The District of Columbia has voted Democratic in every election in which it has been allowed to vote for president, i.e., since 1964.