Why Hillary Clinton Should Offer Obama the Vice Presidency Now

Hillary Clinton should take the bold move of offering Obama the position of Vice President in her administration before the primaries. The fight over who the democratic nominee will be is fracturing the party, and the two of them running together is a compromise everyone could support. Aggressive primary campaigns are stupid, as they damage the party as a whole by fractionating the party and wasting resources that could be used in a general election. By agreeing to this arraignment before the primary they could avoid an aggressive primary campaign, and guaranty themselves the democratic ticket (as the vast majority of democrats support one of them). Some Obama supporters may not like the idea of him as VP, but his running as VP now would put him in a better position for him run for president in a future election.

All of the reservations I have about Obama running for president (mainly that he's young, inexperienced in foreign policy, and a little naïve) don't apply to him as vice president. He could learn a lot in that position, and then he could run for president himself at the end of her term. If he ran for president with the experience of being vice president for 4 or 8 years, there would be no questions about his qualifications, and he could be a much more effective president after having spent many years as VP.

The strongest argument against a Hillary-Obama ticket is that it may not be easy for them to win the national election. All of our previous presidents and vice presidents have been white men, and electing a woman or a black to either of those positions may be difficult. Can a woman and a black man win the presidency together? As a political pragmatist I can't avoid that question, and my answer is that combining their supporters may be able to outweigh the votes it would lose them. That is a question worthy of further investigation.