Do you think that there'd be some support for Bush to pull a Cleveland and run in 2008? I really hope not...if he got the Republican nomination that year then he'd probably win the election!

I think it'd depend on how Bush loses. If he wins the Popular Vote but loses the electoral college, it'd be a less stinging defeat (albeit a very ironic one) and he could potentially come back in 2008. Heck, he could probably point out that his administration warned everybody in 2002 about what was coming.

I doubt Bush would have Cheney as VP again - he'd be too old. Bush would be security-minded, which makes me think Tom Ridge (DHS Secretary) or Condoleezza Rice (National Security Adviser) would get the spot.
 
I can't see any non-ASB POD from Inauguration Day 2005 onward to prevent the 2007/08 recession entirely. Maybe there's some that will knock a point or two off the national unemployment rate but even that might be a tall order. I think that whichever party wins the 2004 election is in trouble four years later as a result.
 
I don't know that I'd trust the polling on a hypothetical Kerry/McCain ticket to hold out once the ticket becomes a reality. My guess is that Kerry bringing McCain on as his running mate ends up causing him a lot more headaches than the benefits the Arizonan would bestow - possibly a reason he never actually asked him to join the ticket IOTL.

Take, for instance, the mess that Arizona would be in as soon as the ticket was announced. The President is considered the leader of the party and by 2004 Bush and co. had shown in Illinois that they wouldn't tolerate dissent in the ranks. McCain had run unopposed in the GOP senate primary that year and was cruising to an easy reelection in the fall as a Republican, but not if he joins the Democratic ticket. I am not familiar with the bylaws of the AZGOP, however it makes sense that Bush/Rove/Cheney are going to lean on the state party officials to find a way to remove McCain as the nominee. If Kerry's announcement comes before the state convention, I suppose they could try to dump him there. If the announcement is later then I imagine the state's central committee would have a special meeting to vote on it. Either way, I can't imagine that the Bush campaign is going to let McCain get away with trying to keep one foot in both camps.

So the GOP is going to nominate someone other than McCain for senate, and that will trigger weeks or months worth of lawsuits. Arizona doesn't have sore loser laws that I can find, so McCain could run as a Democrat or an Independent if the courts rule against him. The former would require him to change his party affiliation and undermine the argument of a "unity ticket," while the latter would deprive him of the statewide apparatus he would need to run an effective campaign. My gut tells me he would run as an independent third party candidate and that the Democrats would just pull the plug on their own already-doomed candidate to back McCain.

All of that means that if John McCain wants to keep his senate seat that year (and he does), he will probably be spending a lot of time campaigning in Arizona. That is time that won't be spent on the campaign trail helping Kerry, whose campaign is now dealing with the 24 hour news cables breathlessly reporting the saga. And speaking of the media...

The media loves John McCain, right? But they also love "gotcha" questions. Everyone knows that McCain and Kerry are running together because of their foreign policy views. After a few days, though, they will have to start talking about domestic politics as well. How long before a reporter asks the mostly-conservative maverick what he thinks of John Kerry's stance on abortion? The environment? Health care? By 2004, John McCain was in Congress for two decades and had well-documented positions on these subjects that were at odds with his runningmate and the Democratic Party platform. His options are pretty much to recant his old positions in favor of the Democratic platform and derail his reputation for straight talk or stick to his guns and undermine Kerry's messaging.

Which brings me to my final point, which is that McCain is not a good enough campaigner to thread the needle on those kinds of questions. Today we remember his greatest hits, like "agents of intolerance" and "No, ma'am," but he really was an undisciplined campaigner. "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," comes to mind as does his hair-brained scheme to call the 2008 campaign to a hiatus to return to Washington D.C. to address the recession. These kinds of gaffes are a problem when you're the nominee and the attention is supposed to be on you. When you're the VP, though, your most important job is to stay on-message - a skill that John McCain apparently lacked.

In conclusion, I think that talking about having John McCain as a running mate was more helpful to Kerry than actually having McCain on the ticket would have been. He'd have been a distraction politically and on the campaign while not really having the temperament necessary to be a good VP candidate. If Kerry does decide to put him on the ticket, though, my guess is that Bush still wins the election and McCain ends up a Republican caucusing independent in the Senate until he loses his seat in 2010.
 
I think Kerry would sign a withdrawal plan just as Bush did, but perhaps a bit earlier than 2008.
Perhaps if he were elected with a Democratic vice president. If he were elected with a Democratic vice president, there would be pressure from the left to withdraw the troops by at least 2007 or 2009.

If he was elected with McCain or a Republican as vice president, there would be pressure from the center and the right to stay in Iraq. But I wouldn't be surprised if he sought a withdrawal plan anyway.
 
Top