[Kerry] needs help exciting voters, and especially the base. Kerry's single biggest problem is that he's boring (or at least seems that way on TV). Can you imagine how dreadfully boring these tickets would sound: Kerry-Gephardt; Kerry-Graham; Kerry-Richardson. Good God. These selections might bag Kerry a state, but at the cost of creating the most boring Democratic ticket in modern American history (with Gore-Lieberman a close second). It doesn't do any good to win Florida and New Mexico if Democrats are too bored to go vote for you in the other states. That's a critical point - picking off individual swing states is only important if you can actually carry the other states.

This is what Edwards brings - excitement. He's young. He's southern. Everyone likes him. He's a great speaker (better than Kerry). He's not a patrician. And he's actually capable of generating excitement (Bob Graham is not). He's the anti-Kerry - he has everything that Kerry lacks. And Kerry has everything that Edwards lacks - experience, national security credibility, and he's a war hero. It seems like a match made in heaven.

Publius provides solid arguments against picking a VP based solely on Electoral College considerations (he feels the effect of the VP on the College are overstated -- the veep doesn't actually insure regional victories), arguments which carry weight because of his own concerns that Democrats are not taking Electoral College considerations seriously enough. (See this previous post.)

Also on Legal Fiction, a site well worth checking in on frequently, Publius speculates that Bush may indeed be in serious trouble because his track record contradicts what people expected of him, and it's the breaking of those expectations that gets people's attention, not necessarily the absolute gravity of any particular action:

Clinton's affair didn't result in impeachment because Americans knew from almost Day One of the Clinton candidacy that he liked to chase women and that he wasn't always truthful. So when the whole Lewinsky debacle broke, it didn't contradict Americans' perception of Clinton (and more specifically, it didn't contradict his strengths). If, however, the economy had bombed during Clinton's presidency, it would have contradicted his strongest perceived virtue - fiscally sound economic policies. Good economics was the raison d'etre of the Clinton presidency, and moral goodness was not.

Now we have Bush. As the Russert interview made painfully clear, our Commander-in-Chief is not exactly a master of the English language. But his gaffes and difficulties with language never hurt him, because Americans have known from Day One of the Bush candidacy that he was not a great speaker. He was not elected for his verbal skills. I would even argue that, absent Iraq, Bush wouldn't have been hurt significantly by the enormous deficits caused by his tax cuts. Everyone knew he was going to try to cut taxes, so the tax-cutting (and its consequences) didn't cause anyone to change their view of Bush.

The real strength of the Bush presidency relies on the perception that he is honest and that he is the best leader to fight terrorism. Iraq has destroyed both perceptions.