Ever since Obama sent out that email to his supporters promising them the opportunity to learn his VP nominee via text message instead of two minutes later on the Internet or television- which was fucking brilliant, by the way, now that they have 2 million cell phone numbers, which are political gold and making an Obama endorsement in any future election an even bigger deal than it might have otherwise been- it’s the number one question on everybody’s mind. Biden? Kaine? Daschle? Clark? Bayh? Sebelius?

Let me humbly submit that, while I find the topic roughly as compelling as the question of whether Kyle Orton or Rex Grossman will be lining up under center in the Bears’ opener (which is to say, really fucking compelling), the two have roughly the same relevance  to the world’s geopolitical scene. Because the office of Vice President is one of the dopiest in politics. It’s dumb and it doesn’t really matter and we’d be a better country if it didn’t exist. The chain of succession could just as easily bypass the middleman and go President - Speaker of the House - President pro temp - etc, etc.

I mean, I guess it’s a novel idea, if kinda morbid, that American Presidents get to hand-pick their own successor in the event of their own death, but the idea that most people seem to have of the office’s role is so wildly off-base that it results in a process that totally undermines that whole point.

The only thing that a candidate can accomplish by selecting a Vice President is a symbolic statement of which group he intends to focus on. That is all. There is nothing else. The idea of balancing the ticket is pointless. The Vice President isn’t the President’s tag-team partner, ready to step in if the head guy has a weakness. If Obama’s foreign policy is in question, picking a retired general to shore up his military credentials doesn’t actually accomplish anything. If he’s too inexperienced, picking a careerist doesn’t ensure that he’ll have all the necessary connections. If he’s too young, picking an old dude doesn’t suddenly average them out. If he’s too liberal, going with some anti-abortion nut from a red state doesn’t actually change Obama’s policies; if he’s too conservative, opting for Dennis Kucinich or Russ Feingold doesn’t mean those dudes actually get any say in governing the country. All the idea of picking a Vice President who fills in the nominee’s gaps is ensure that, if the actual President somehow leaves office, his replacement is someone who doesn’t have all that much in common with him.

Assuming Obama doesn’t die, his Vice President isn’t actually going to have much in the way of power, because the office has no actual power. Post-Cheney, that’s in question, but I’m going to hope that Obama-the-constitutional-scholar isn’t interested in investing whichever goofball he picks with bizarre new powers just for the hell of it. So there’s no point in picking anybody to shore up Obama’s perceived weaknesses. In fact, trying to do so only makes those things more pronounced. So what the hell?

All you can do is pick a Vice President as a symbol. Which is why I joined that anti-Evan Bayh Facebook group the other day. Because I don’t particularly care for the symbolism of a hawkish legacy Senator suddenly being Obama’s best-buddy until the Wednesday after the election, at which point they can ignore each other for 4-8 years. But you know what? If he picks Bayh? It doesn’t actually make a bit of difference. He’ll be as good a Vice President as Biden or Hillary Clinton or Ralph Nader or Jay-Z. Which is to say, totally ineffective by the design of the Constitution. So we’ve got that going for us. I have my own thoughts on who I’d like to see selected as a symbol, but you know what? It’s so irrelevant to the entire debate that I’m not even going to say who she is. What difference does it make? It might as well be your mom.