Obama's Choice for Veep

The word is out.

Everyone is saying that Barack Obama is about to decide on his running mate.

Hmmm. The Democratic Convention begins a week from today.

Other than the fact that the Summer Olympics will be in progress until Sunday (therefore creating a bit of a distraction in the news media), I don't think you have to be psychic to conclude that Obama would need to make his choice soon.

• CNN says Obama is "expected to end the guessing game this week."
  
  And CNN's blog, Political Ticker, says Sen. Joe Biden is likely to be the choice.
• Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that Biden "may have become the front-runner," although he hesitates to dismiss Kaine as a possibility.
  
  "On the downside," writes Tapper, "an Obama-Kaine ticket would have two candidates who are so new to the national arena that they could be attacked for being light on experience."
  
  (Er, um, but Biden has been in the Senate for 36 years. Isn't that a little too status quo for this year's ticket? Where would "change" fit into that equation?)
  
  Tapper also reports that his colleague, George Stephanopoulos, now sees Hillary Clinton as a dark horse for the veep slot, rating "50:1" odds.
  
  (Many of Clinton's supporters believe that she earned a spot on the ticket with her strong showing in the primaries. But it doesn't work that way. I know John Edwards was the second-place finisher in 2004, but it was John Kerry's decision to put him on the ticket. It wasn't something Edwards earned. This decision is Barack Obama's to make.)
• Ben Smith and Glenn Thrush agree in Politico that Obama will make his announcement this week.
  
  But they are making no commitments on who the choice will be.
  
  They observe that Obama was scheduled to campaign with Gov. Bill Richardson today in New Mexico (where Hillary Clinton made an appearance yesterday, urging her supporters in New Mexico to "work as hard for Sen. Obama as you worked for me") and with Virginia's current and former governors, Tim Kaine (incumbent) and Mark Warner (now a candidate for U.S. Senate), later in the week.
  
  Observers now seem to think, however, that Warner's selection as the convention's keynote speaker will adversely affect fellow Virginian Kaine's chances of being Obama's running mate.
• Dan Balz reports, in the Washington Post's The Trail blog, that Obama has narrowed his list to five prospects — Biden, Kaine, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius — and he says that speculation on the fifth name is centering on Richardson, Chris Dodd and Jack Reed.
• If Obama doesn't bring enough experience to the ticket, the New Republic's blog The Stump has a name with eight years' worth of vice presidential gravitas — former Vice President Al Gore.
  
  A word of caution, though — Al might be a little old for a redux of that bus tour thing.
  
  Of course, come to think of it, Biden is older than Gore is. And so is Dodd. And so is Richardson.
  
  Sebelius is about Gore's age. And Reed is a little younger — but not much.
  
  Bayh is a comparative youngster at 52 (53 by Inauguration Day). And Kaine is the youngest of all, at 50.

Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias writes, in the Think Progress blog, that it's time to abolish the vice presidency.

What? And give up the opportunity to speculate wildly — sometimes on both parties' running mates — for weeks every four years?

My goodness, what would the pundits do with all that time on their hands?