Rumor has it that McCain is going to announce his VP pick really soon. Ostensibly his reason for doing it now is that he’s jealous of all the attention Obama’s been getting for his overseas trip and wants to bring some focus back onto himself. Which leaves a few thoughts.

One, if he’s really going to select Mitt Romney, is the McCain campaign really dumb enough not to know that picking the person everybody already thinks you’re going to does little to generate excitement? They haven’t been running a very good campaign so far, so it’s possible that maybe they just don’t realize that. But I’m going to assume they’re savvy enough to get it, which means that if they do announce in the next couple days, they’re not going with Romney. If they don’t, it probably boosts his odds a little bit.

Two, it’s not going to be Bobby Jindal. In fact, I’d put money down against any of y’all that think he’s going to pick a non-white, non-male VP. At this point, the only thing McCain has going for him is the fact that he’s a white male, and I expect that he’s going to want to double-down on white maleness, rather than risk blowing his one appeal to a certain kind of voter. It’s not going to be Carly Fiorina or Kay Bailey Hutchison. It’s not going to be Bobby Jindal. It’s definitely not going to be Condi Rice or Colin Powell- neither of them has even endorsed McCain yet. In fact, they’ve both expressly not endorsed him. And even if I’m overestimating McCain’s awareness that he Obama will beat him like a gong on the change issue unless he, like, offers the job to Jay-Z, it still won’t be Jindal because Jindal is smart. He’s in his late thirties, and is one of the few bright rising stars in the current Republican party. There’s little to be gained from affixing himself to the McCain campaign right now; he’s smart enough to know that doing so puts his chances of actually being vice-president at an outside shot, at best. It would definitely keep his name associated with McCain for a few cycles, who may end up one of the grand losers in Republican presidential political history. It’d also cast some more early attention on the weirder bits of his past, which isn’t good for him. Something he wrote about how awesome exorcisms are when he was 23 isn’t as big a deal when he’s fifty as it is when he’s 37. He’ll wait it out.

Three, almost every choice McCain has sucks. Romney isn’t going to shore up any aspect of his base. The fiscal conservatives are already grudgingly voting for McCain because they fear Obama and the religious conservatives aren’t keen on a Mormon. Rudy Giuliani further alienates social conservatives and doesn’t make him any more competitive in New York than Romney would make him in Massachusetts. Charlie Crist and Lindsay Graham are unlikely- America is not keen on fifty-something bachelors as candidates for high office, and Crist carries a 52% negative in Florida right now, so he doesn’t make it a lock. Tim Pawlenty is better, but he’s still not going to deliver Minnesota, where Obama polls high and which only re-elected the governor by 21,000 votes anyway. The Republican establishment has little to offer McCain. His only decent choice, really, is Tom Ridge- in fact, if I were putting money down right now, I’d put it on Ridge to get the nod. He’s a rare popular Republican who could actually help deliver Pennsylvania, which is probably McCain’s best chance for scoring a blue state. And, with Ridge’s career in electoral politics pretty much wrapped up, he doesn’t suffer any real ill-effects from being tied to a loser.