Matt Yglesias

The Stevenson Scenario

As everyone has now heard, Joe Biden has now said he’s not the VP pick. It seems, basically, that neither Biden nor Evan Bayh nor Tim Kaine nor Kathleen Sebelius is going to get the nod. Nor are candidates who’ve gotten grassroots support such as Hillary Clinton or Wesley Clark going to be chosen. Nor Bill Richardson nor Chris Dodd. And yet the VP will also be someone from that list of aforementioned not-choices. Which is puzzling. But by the same token, a month ago everyone knew that Barack Obama “had to” make his pick before the start of the Olympics. And yet he didn’t. So presumably everything we know is wrong.

But as long as the world needs blog posts and Veep speculation, how about this — Obama could pull an Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and throw the selection open to the Convention delegates. The problem with that move, of course, is that you don’t get to fine-tune the pick. But it turns out to be the case that there seem to be substantial problems with all the possible picks. And opening the selection to the field would ensure huge media coverage of the convention and perhaps a bigger-than-usual convention bump.