Stash those Barack Obama/Ann Veneman buttons
Perhaps the most improbable pairing to emerge so far in the vice presidential guessing game -- the bizarre prospect floated in recent days that Barack Obama would tap former Bush administration Cabinet member Ann Veneman as his running mate -- apparently can be put out to a well-deserved pasture.
The Fresno Bee -- dutifully following up on a recent, and utterly hard-to-fathom, report that Veneman (raised in nearby Modesto) was a possibility for the second spot on Obama's ticket -- has thrown cold water on a matchup that never was going to happen anyway.
Michael Doyle blogs for the Bee that a spokesman for UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency Veneman has headed since 2005, informed him that she "has not been contacted by the [Obama] campaign and is solely focused on her current travels."
Veneman was in Africa when Politico.com posted a story Friday evening reporting that, according to two anonymous Democrats, Obama's veep vetters had bandied her name about on Capitol Hill.
The piece insisted that Veneman "has a biography that could be suited to Obama's unifying message. A Republican raised on a California peach farm, she rose to become the nation’s first female agriculture secretary. In 2002 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which was treated successfully."
A brief buzz resulted -- mainly the sound of progressives gnashing their teeth.
The Nation, for instance, termed Veneman a "uniquely awful choice" for Obama. Among the most basic problems, the magazine noted, was that the onetime corporate lawyer "was known to organized labor as one the most militant advocates for free trade in a militantly pro-free trade Bush administration."
There also is the small matter of the lack of any discernible asset Veneman would have offered to allay concerns some have about Obama's readiness for the White House.
To return to reality, the hardening consensus among pundits as Obama's choice nears is that it will be one of these three (listed alphabetically): Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, or Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.
-- Don Frederick
Photo credit: Associated Press
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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Are there really Obama/Veneman buttons, or did you create that concept for the article?
Posted by: Marc Sigoloff | August 17, 2008 at 04:51 AM