In late March, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), the co-chairman of John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, raised a few eyebrows when he said he hadn’t endorsed McCain this year, and didn’t have any plans to do so. “When I endorse someone, or when I work for someone, or commit to someone, I want to be behind that person in every way I can,” Hagel said. “I’ve obviously got some differences with John on the Iraq war. That’s no secret. I want to understand a little more about foreign policy, where he’d want to go.”
While conceding different visions of foreign policy, though, Hagel added that his discomfort with McCain “certainly doesn’t put me in Obama or Clinton’s camp.”
That seemed like a pretty clear indication of Hagel’s state of mind. He’s a conservative Republican who agrees with McCain in general, but rejects McCain’s entire foreign policy worldview. That hardly makes him sympathetic to the campaign of a left-leaning Dem.
And yet, the rumor mill keeps churning. This won’t help.
Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel said Friday he would consider serving as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s running mate if asked, but he doesn’t expect to be on any ticket.
Hagel’s vocal criticism of the Bush administration since the 2003 invasion of Iraq has touched off speculation that if Obama were to pick a Republican running mate, it might be Hagel. Hagel said in an interview with The Associated Press that after devoting much of his life to his country — in the Senate and the U.S. Army — he would have to consider any offer.
“If it would occur, I would have to think about it,” Hagel said. “I think anybody, anybody would have to consider it. Doesn’t mean you’d do it, doesn’t mean you’d accept it, could be too many gaps there, but you’d have to consider it, it’s the only thing you could do. Why wouldn’t you?”
This strikes me as wildly far-fetched. Hagel has been terrific on the war, and has been an articulate critic of the Bush/McCain foreign policy. Dick Cheney loathes Hagel, which makes me like him even more. If a President Obama were to make Hagel the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, it’d be fine with me.
But talk of an Obama-Hagel ticket strikes me as misplaced.
Mike Madden had a good piece in Salon the other day about Hagel, how he’d become a McCain circa ’00 maverick, and what he might bring to a national ticket.
While Hagel is a long shot for the job, what seems to be stirring some interest in him is less a question of electoral math than of political metaphysics. Running with a Republican would reinforce the message that Obama is serious about changing the way things are done in Washington, and that he really does aim to move the country past the partisan battles of the last couple of decades. At the same time, Hagel’s very public split with Bush and the rest of the GOP on the war in Iraq bolsters Obama’s case about foreign policy — that the administration has America on the wrong track vis-à-vis the rest of the world.
But Hagel may be a more attractive candidate in theory than in reality. The buzz about him seems to overlook the fact that he is, despite how much he may like to criticize his own party, a conservative Republican, especially on issues that don’t involve foreign affairs. Politics, the saying goes, stops at the water’s edge. So might the Obama-Hagel ticket.
If we start and end the analysis at foreign policy, Hagel would be a reasonable choice. Indeed, Hagel probably wouldn’t even be a Republican. But on practically everything else, Hagel isn’t just conservative, he’s voted with Bush across the board. Over the course of his career, Hagel has earned an 85% rating from the American Conservative Union, which makes him among the chamber’s most conservative members of the last decade.
Hagel and Obama, in other words, disagree about almost everything. It’s not exactly a recipe for a ticket, no matter how much they agree on Iraq.
Sam Stein recently noted that Hagel is “quickly becoming Barack Obama’s answer to Joe Lieberman.”
If Hagel wants to fill that role, I’d be thrilled. In fact, Hagel certainly seems estranged from his party, and he has publicly suggested that he can no longer relate to today’s GOP.
But before anyone gets carried away with VP talk, maybe Hagel could, I don’t know, endorse Obama? It’d be a helpful start.