Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern has a piece of advice for Barack Obama in his search for a vice president: first and foremost, choose someone who won't do your candidacy any damage.
"Remember the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take: first do no harm," said the South Dakota Democrat in a telephone interview. "You want to be sure that whoever you pick is not going to prove to be a controversial person and make it more difficult for you to run."*
McGovern should know. His initial choice for vice president turned out to be a monumental blunder after it was revealed that Sen. Thomas Eagleton had once undergone shock therapy. McGovern, who initially claimed to back the Missouri Democrat "1000 percent," was eventually forced to accept his withdrawal. Since then, the '72 campaign has become exhibit A for a vice presidential search gone wrong.
"We didn't have any time for [background research]," he recalled. "The first half dozen people that I chose turned me down. I guess they didn't think I had a chance to win or they just didn't want to be Vice President. I was really up to fifteen minutes before the deadline when I chose Sen. Eagleton ... About 4:30 in the morning, after I had made my acceptance speech, we heard the rumors. A day or two later the story broke."
Fortunately for Obama -- as McGovern noted -- there are no such time constraints this go-around. With several months between the end of the primary and the Democratic convention, the Illinois Democrat has the chance to do his due diligence in selecting a running mate.
"I think he is very wise to have a good committee appointed to screen the various possibilities, to learn everything they can about them, faults as well as virtues," said the longtime Democrat.
Beyond the do-no-harm prerequisite, there are several characteristics that McGovern suggests Obama consider.
"You should get somebody who can take over the job on a moments notice if necessary, somebody who has the qualifications you would want in a successful president," he said. "And then, if you can find somebody who could help you politically - for instance, picking up a state or several states - you might feel you need some buttressing and that would be important too."
McGovern shied away from describing which current VP possibilities fit said description. But when asked specifically about Sen. Hillary Clinton -- the candidate he endorsed early in the primary only to, in the later stages, throw his support behind Obama -- McGovern said: "She would be a strong candidate."
As for past VP picks, McGovern said he admired Lyndon Johnson (his "place as number two on the ticket helped carry several states that we wouldn't have carried") and Al Gore ("an articulate, respected figure, who I think bolstered the Clinton ticket"). Both those choices, notably, did not result in political distractions, something McGovern still laments about his own choice.
"It was really a very difficult thing for us and it definitely broke the momentum of our campaign from which we never really recovered," he said of '72. "Strangely enough the media spent more time hashing about the Eagleton choice and my final decision to ask him to step down than they did the Watergate break in. If they had given as much time to the Watergate break in, which occurred on June 17, as they did to the Eagleton affair, which occurred in the middle of that summer, it would have made a big difference on our campaign."
* Acknowledging the inherent dorkiness of this footnote - the "first do no harm" line is widely believed to come from the Hippocratic Oath but likely comes from the Hippocratic writing Epidemics. Feel free to send me your snide remarks.