Medved apparently was inspired to compile his list after McCain invited three prospects -- Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal and Charlie Crist -- to spend the Memorial Day weekend with him in Arizona."Each of the three visitors offers strengths and weaknesses to a potential ticket," writes Medved, "as do the other names under consideration for the Republican nomination for vice president of the United States."
The "bottom line," according to Medved, is that Jindal should be the choice.
"Jindal offers the GOP the best chance in many years for reshaping the party's tarnished, tired image without in any way abandoning timeless conservative principles," he concludes. "The very prospect of a vice president whose full legal name is Piyush Subhaschandra Amrit "Bobby" Jindal has a marvelously exotic, only-in-America feel to it."
I can't help thinking that, if a McCain-Jindal ticket won the election, Chief Justice John Roberts would spend some time rehearsing Jindal's name in the weeks before January 20 so he could pronounce it correctly during the inauguration ceremony.
However, "[i]f McCain for some reason misses this obvious choice, Mary Jodi Rell of Connecticut offers another ground-breaking possibility which Democrats will find tough to smear," Medved says.
Rell, as Medved points out, won the governor's office in a heavily Democratic state. "Her husband is a Navy pilot (like McCain), and she herself is a courageous breast cancer survivor," Medved observes.
And the worst thing he can say about her? "[S]he would be the first individual on a national ticket since Truman without a college degree."
But, as Medved acknowledges, "In today’s anti-elitist climate, that might actually be an advantage."
