why not Hillary as veep? let me count the ways

There have been moments, many moments, during this campaign when I have been angered by the words or actions of Senator Hillary Clinton or one of her surrogates.

Nevertheless, over the preceding months, both on this site and when talking in person to hundreds of friends and neighbors and strangers I have held my tongue, selected my words carefully and sometimes imperfectly, and have thus far successfully avoided resorting to derogatory or sophomoric language to describe Mrs. Clinton.

Such language is not only not in my nature and training as a physician, as someone who has learned over time to carefully choose words that might have the greatest impact. Such language, I felt, was necessarily avoided if I was, in every political encounter, to be a representative of Senator Obama, and the type of campaign he is waging.

That is not to say it has been easy.

After all, at times Senator Clinton and her campaign have resembled the political ways and manners of George Bush and his campaign architect, Karl Rove.

Which is, I suppose, the most derogatory thing I might say.

And yet, despite it all, I recognize and acknowledge that Senator Clinton is a bright and capable political figure, one whose support - and that of her supporters - we will need come November 4th if we hope to, as Senator Obama says, prevent John McCain from carrying out George Bush's third term.

However, I feel very strongly that she should not be offered the vice-presidential slot on an Obama ticket. Very strongly. While a review of history reveals that the vice-presidential nominee seldom offers much to bolster or harm the candidacy of the nominee for president, I believe in the case of an Obama-Clinton ticket, history will provide us - as it always does - with an exception.

What follows are reasons that it is important to me that Hillary Clinton not be offered the vice-presidential slot on the Obama ticket. I trust that readers will offer many more:

1. Her 2002 AUMF vote. Authorizing a rogue president to launch an unnecessary war ought to have been a career-ending lapse of judgment.

2. Her inability to have read – before her AUMF vote – the National Intelligence Estimate hastily assembled in the fall of 2002 which warned of the dire consequences of an attack on Iraq. Is this the kind of experience we want on the Democratic ticket?

3. Her yea vote on Kyl-Lieberman in September 2007, which ratcheted up tensions with Iran by calling for the designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. One cannot run as an anti-war candidate having both voted for war, and for laying the foundation for future wars. Her presence on an Obama ticket would undermine every argument he might make for being the anti-war contrast to Senator McCain.

4. Her devolvingly nasty kitchen-sink campaign, and her repeated use of smear tactics and smear merchants to kneecap Senator Obama in the aptly-renamed Tonya Harding Strategy. That she was willing to employ scorched-earth tactics at the risk of significant harming to the party's chances in the fall election, all in desperate attempts to win the nomination, confirms once again that though the Clintons have built their careers on the notion that their commitment to public service is all about you, really it's all about them.

5. Her willingness to leave open the door for xenophobic and anti-Muslim sentiment to spread unchecked in the minds of voters by stating that Obama was not a Muslim, "so far as I know". It's very difficult to forgive this, and to forgive her campaign's heavy-handed attempts to play the race card and pigeonhole Obama as a niche (i.e. black) candidate.

6. Her Michigan and Florida shenanigans. She pledged to honor the DNC’s decision, but when faced with desperation, she then wanted to change the rules. Imagine her and her husband’s outcry had the situation been reversed. During this campaign, she repeatedly displayed a willingness to avoid playing by the rules, or to try and change the rules altogether. Is this what we want in a Vice-President? Isn't this something like what we currently have?

7. Bill 2.0. Do we really want Bill back in the White House? Do we really want him injecting himself back into the American body politic? Who will hold him accountable? How will the White House function with an ex-president vying for influence?

8. Her clearly erroneous decision earlier in the primary season to send her husband back into the political trenches to fight her dirty battles. By involving Bill, Hillary assumed the enormous risk of being seen as something other than her own candidate. If she was a bona fide candidate, in her own right, she shouldn't have needed him. That she did means she will continue to need him. Why should we expect that to ever change?

9. The Clinton Legacy. While some aspects of Bill Clinton's presidency are to be admired, his missteps, with the full assistance of Hillary (remember their boast that we got "two for one"?), propelled Republicans into power in Congress for 12 years, and propelled George W. Bush into power in an election Al Gore should have won easily. Let's remember that when the Clintons left office, there were fewer Democratic senators, representatives, governors, and state legislators than when they entered it. If Hillary Clinton is on the ticket, expect a full re-examination of this legacy, of Bill's missteps, the degree to which will make the Reverend Wright distraction seem minor by comparison.

10. The Clinton's shared career has been an endless strong of scandals. They have a bad reputation for truthfulness. Why should we suppose that would change? While there may be some Democrats who wish to return to those days, clearly most Democrats are ready to move on.

11. Mark Penn, Terry McAuliffe, and James Carville. They, along with the Clintons, are masters of the politics of personal diminishment. They represent the style of politics Americans are tired of and want to see changed in Washington. Most Americans have had enough of spin and divisive tactics over the past eight years and do not want anymore. With Hillary, Obama would inherit these divisive figures.

12. Senator Clinton is a living symbol of the culture wars of the past. She is the anti-Obama, a vision of the ghosts of politics past to distract from his vision of politics future. Her presence on the ticket would mean a continuation of the same tired old partisan, ideological battles we've been fighting for the past sixteen years. It's time America moves beyond the Vietnam War, the 1960s, and the 1990s all at once.

13. It is difficult to imagine Senator Clinton carrying Obama's banner of change while at the same time carrying such a heavy burden of the past, of the status quo. Clinton has more baggage than Samsonite; her presence on the ticket would take this country on a trip down memory lane, and it is highly questionable whether those memories will be good ones.

14. Her over fifty percent unfavorable ratings, far higher than Obama's, and even McCain's. Only two percent of voters claim no opinion of her, a very small number of voters to convince to swing to her side. She is a known commodity, and half of America does not want to own it.

and, perhaps the strongest reason of them all:

15. Her presence on the ticket would be the surest way to unify a fractured Republican Party. She will rally the Republican base to McCain's side, a man they don't particularly like, like nothing else, just to keep "Billary" from ever stepping foot near the White House again. While Clinton complains bitterly, and to some degree rightly so, about the "vast right-wing conspiracy, she all the while recruits it, feeds it, and sends it to war.