The topic that newscasters and political pundits cannot get enough of lately is whether Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will run on the same ticket in the presidential race in November.
As I flipped through CNN, MSNBC and ““ getting desperate ““ Fox News, I heard the same question posed over and over again.
This aggravated me. Not only because, like many Americans, I am currently desperate to hear about anything other than the Democratic primaries, but because the answer is so painfully clear.
No, Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton will not run on the same ticket. Ever.
If, as many predict, Obama maintains his delegate lead and wins the nomination, would he offer the vice presidency to someone he recently said participated in “slash-and-burn, say-anything, do-anything special-interest-driven politics?”
And if Clinton somehow manages to clinch the nomination, is she going to want to run with a person she proclaimed so incompetent that he is incapable of answering late night phone calls?
If this happens, Sen. John McCain won’t need new material for his campaign ads in November ““ he can just roll clips from the Democratic primary.
A more worthy discussion would center on why the Democratic primary is so divisive that neither Clinton nor Obama would even consider choosing each other as running mates. This rankles, especially when compared with the seemingly painless and quick Republican primary process.
Of course, part of the relative ease of the Republican primary is simply due to the fact that McCain was clearly the Republican Party’s strongest candidate and had little serious competition.
Yet the Democratic process still encourages party disunity in several subtle ways.
For instance, Democratic caucuses make absolutely no sense. Democratic caucus voters must stand in designated places of the room that announce who they support. If your candidate of choice doesn’t have enough supporters, you have to leave and go stand in another candidate’s section.
To make matters even more ridiculous, the delegates distributed among the candidates depend on such irrelevant factors as how many Democrats voted in the last presidential election in your precinct.
Recently, Democratic Party leaders showed how much they love their overly complicated rules at the expense of actual democracy with how they handled the primary in Florida.
Both the Republican and Democratic primaries broke party rules because they were held too early.
Republicans responded by cutting the state’s delegates in half.
Democrats stripped Florida of all delegates.
I understand that, for whatever reason, drawing out presidential primaries into a months-long battle is important to them, but is a few days’ difference really worth disenfranchising and angering the incredibly important swing state of Florida?
Maintaining complicated processes and making illogical decisions serves only one major function: to call into question the legitimacy of whoever wins the Democratic nomination.
This takes what would be an ideal situation of a race between two strongly promising nominees and turns it into a bloody battle based on technicalities.
In March a Yale professor, Akhil Reed Amar, wrote a fascinating article on Slate.com, describing how the 25th Amendment to the Constitution allows Clinton and Obama to run not only on the same ticket, but to take turns holding office during the four-year term.
It’s a scenario that is pleasantly surprising for the Democrats. Of course, as Amar notes in the article, it’s a situation that would be dependent on both of the potential nominees playing nice with each other.
Which means it’s already too late for this particular race.
But that doesn’t mean the Democratic Party shouldn’t reevaluate its priorities.
If Obama and Clinton had decided to join forces a few months ago, they would probably be considered an unbeatable dream team against McCain, who, despite his best efforts, still represents a continuation of the Bush Administration in most voters’ minds.
The Democrats should hope for a similar situation in the future, and change it to foster unity instead of bitter contests that alienate candidates and voters alike.
Strickland would be willing to consider joining the winning ticket. E-mail her offers for the vice presidency at kstrickland@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.