Clinton missed her chance to change course of race
BETHLEHEM, Pa. - In last Wednesday's Democratic debate, ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson gave Hillary Clinton a chance to transform the presidential race - and she didn't take it.
It came when Gibson asked both Clinton and Barack Obama if they would accept a proposal made by former New York governor Mario Cuomo in a recent Globe guest column.
"Pledge now that whichever one of you wins this contest, you'll take the other as your running mate, and that the other one will agree, if they lose, to take second place on the ticket," Gibson said, outlining Cuomo's proposal.
Clinton clearly has more to gain from having Obama as her VP than vice versa: She has been looking for a way to persuade undecided superdelegates - the party leaders who will provide the winning margin for either her or Obama - that they can safely back her even if she doesn't win quite as many elected delegates as Obama in the primary elections.
For Democratic insiders, voting against the candidate who won more delegates would carry a lot of risks - especially the possibility that Obama's black supporters would be so outraged at having his victory undone by party leaders that they would stay home on Election Day. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has said as much.
Choosing Clinton over Obama as the nominee would also run the risk of alienating young people - who've flocked to the polls for the youthful Illinois senator - and those who like Obama's pledge to end "politics as usual."
But if Obama were already committed to serving on the ticket as vice president, there'd be little fear of any of his supporters staying home - and superdelegates would therefore feel far freer to choose Clinton.
After Gibson made his offer, both candidates paused. Then Obama jumped in.
"I think it's premature at this point to talk about who the vice presidential candidates will be," he said.
Clinton never directly answered the question, declaring instead that it's "absolutely imperative that our entire party closes ranks" after the nomination fight.
But if Clinton is to win the nomination, she'll need to have a majority of the superdelegates, because even if she wins today's Pennsylvania primary by a big margin, she is still unlikely to end the primary season with more pledged delegates than Obama.
Her best hope would be that her strong finish would create doubts about Obama's ability to win the types of voters the party will need in November.
She then would have to persuade most of the roughly 300 undecided superdelegates that she would be better able to withstand Republican attacks.
But no matter what, she would have to answer their fears of overturning the will of the voters. And being able to guarantee that Obama will be on the ticket would go a long way toward reassuring them.
Both Hillary and Bill Clinton seem to know this, and they have both strongly hinted that she would offer the vice presidential slot to Obama.
Obama has disclaimed any interest. But there's a long history of candidates dismissing the vice presidency as though it were rackingly degrading, only to vie for it after losing the presidential nomination (see Romney, Mitt), and Obama would probably realize that he could make himself the party's true heir apparent by becoming vice president.
In the debate, Gibson gave Clinton the perfect opportunity to pressure Obama into agreeing to serve with her. So why didn't she take it?
"I don't think either of them wants to be boxed in," offered Clinton's spokesman Doug Hattaway, at a campaign stop in Bethlehem Sunday, though he quickly added, "A lot of people think that would be a dream ticket."
Even if Obama had failed to take the pledge with her, Clinton would have established her willingness to accept him as vice president. She would also have shown that she could make strong decisions on the fly. She would have demonstrated her commitment to the party, and thereby taken some of the wind out of demands that she withdraw from the race.
The cost to Clinton would be that if she lost the nomination, she'd be obliged to serve as Obama's running mate. That shouldn't be too uncomfortable for a woman who claims to have an ambitious policy agenda ready "on day one," and who could put herself to work for the new administration. Dick Cheney could tell her how much an experienced Washington hand can accomplish while working under a neophyte president.
If Clinton had accepted Gibson's offer, the political dialogue this week and beyond would be quite different, focused more on dream tickets than nightmare scenarios; and the prime beneficiary, on so many levels, would have been Hillary Clinton.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. 