Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel, followed by Israel’s targeted response less than a week later, might have changed Donald Trump’s calculus for selecting a running mate.
A few months ago, it might have seemed likely that Trump would choose a military veteran as his vice president, with the intention of solidifying his hold on any wavering veterans from 2020, when 6 out of 10 reported voting for him.
But then the world spent days on the edge of an enormous regional conflict after Iran attacked Israel directly for the first time. Serious people — including the portion of the American electorate concerned about national security — know a dangerous development when they see it. Trump may well now consider hawkish voters so securely in his camp that the former president will reach further afield for a running mate.
That could explain why, over the past week or so, I have repeatedly heard two names mentioned as rising in both Trumpworld and establishment GOP circles: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
Trump doesn’t need to name an on-fire populist Republican — voters looking for red meat get all they need from the man himself. And if he calculates that he doesn’t need to court hawkish voters either, that might mean going for someone “reassuring” to the undecideds, as Trump did in 2016 by selecting Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
After all, given the makeup of the US electorate, both presidential candidates are simply hunting for a few thousand voters here, a few thousand voters there who can make the difference in a battleground state. Today’s undecideds in key states will likely determine the election’s outcome this fall.
That is exactly what happened in 2016 and 2020. NBC News’s analysis is that only 78,000 votes in three states kept Hillary Clinton from beating Trump in 2016 and that Trump needed only 45,000 more votes in three states to have beaten Joe Biden in 2020.
Those of us who want Trump to win in the fall think there are at least a couple of percentage points to be gained from voters who, considering the ages of the two candidates at the top of the ticket, will vote based on a comparison of the vice-presidential candidates.
Trump and Republicans generally need a sharp contrast between these understudies so that voters will see a clear choice. Some voters — not just hardcore Republicans — must have shuddered at the thought of Vice President Harris’s participation in the White House Situation Room meeting during Iran’s assault on Israel. At least her presence was needed only by “secure video” and not in person.
Given that Harris’s approval ratings are even worse than Biden’s miserable numbers (she’s at 36 percent, compared with her boss’s 41 percent, according to a USA Today-Suffolk University poll last month), many voters simply don’t want to imagine her behind the Oval Office desk during a crisis.
Trump can thus gain an easy advantage by choosing a running mate who has the right personality and résumé in an era of extraordinary danger. Female voters from the suburbs who just want a safe world for their children — in the 1990s, they were called soccer moms, after 9/11, security moms — can be pivotal in elections. In 2020, suburban women helped put Biden over the top, but now Harris is a known quantity — and an increasingly unpopular one. Will their support remain strong when it means keeping Harris one heartbeat away from the presidency in this fraught era, its perils made clear by the fusillade aimed at Israel?
Both Burgum and Youngkin have sterling credentials and were hugely successful in the private sector, but both also come across as affable, hyper-competent executives in state government. Each has signature issues. Youngkin is also the standard-bearer for school reform. Burgum is a tech guy who could lead the effort to prepare the federal government for the coming impact of artificial intelligence and quantum computing. But beyond their specialties in the public square, they strike most fair observers as very smart and, crucially, unflappable.
This isn’t to discount that possibility that Trump will ultimately go with a military veteran and try to move that 6 out of 10 veterans to 7 or 8 out of 10. A short list of possible contenders would include veterans such as Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa); Mike Pompeo, a graduate of the US Military Academy, former secretary of state and former CIA director; and Robert C. O’Brien, former national security adviser.
The decision will come down to who seems best suited to helping Trump flip the equivalent of those 45,000 swing-state voters who went for Biden in 2020. Unlike in that election, when the candidates were four years younger and the world in a less volatile state , voters may well take a much harder look at the running mates and think: When trouble starts, which one can I confidently picture in the Situation Room?
Tags: Opinion Trumps vicepresidential search path
