G.O.P. Sen. Robert Portman (Ohio)
Mitt Romney’s campaign is floundering – badly.
ObamaCare always presented a dilemma for Mitt, since it was largely modeled after RomneyCare. In the space of one week, Romney has turned a dilemma into a disaster. His spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom of Etch-a-Sketch fame has attained new heights of media incompetence. Romney is now locked into the untenable position of saying that the ObamaCare mandate is a tax but that the RomneyCare mandate is not a tax. Thus, he now has a major credibility gap on health care issues.
While Romney has been fumbling, President Barack Obama has been gaining momentum, in spite of the unfavorable jobs report of Friday, July 6. Virtually every national reputable poll has him ahead in the popular vote, and statewide polls show him moving ahead in Ohio, a state that Romney must carry in order to win the presidency. Even more significantly, a USA Today-Gallup Poll reported on Sunday, July 8 that among swing-state voters who say that recent commercials have changed their minds about a candidate, 76 percent now support Obama, with only 16 percent favoring Romney.
Yet Romney now has a clear opportunity to regain momentum by designating Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) as his running mate for vice president. Portman brings to the ticket two major advantages. First, the selection of Rob Portman will vastly improve Mitt Romney’s chances of carrying the must-win state of Ohio. Second, Portman projects unquestionable competence and integrity, and these are two qualities uppermost in the minds of the voters in Campaign 2012.
It is commonplace for today’s pundits to suggest that vice presidential nominees do not have a significant impact on the election outcome. While that is usually true, there are exceptions, and Portman’s status as the most popular statewide elected official in Ohio could make Campaign 2012 one of them. In a close race in Ohio, Portman’s popularity may well give Romney that advantage necessary to carry the Buckeye State and thus win the presidency.
The 1960 election is the quintessential example of where the choice of a vice presidential running mate proved to be decisive. My favorite historical biographer, Robert Caro, relates in his latest work, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power, how John F. Kennedy, despite the passionate opposition of his brother, Robert, selected Lyndon B. Johnson as his vice presidential running mate in 1960, because he knew that he needed LBJ to carry the states of Texas, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Had JFK not selected LBJ as his running mate, he would have lost these states and thereby the election to Richard M. Nixon. In 2012, if Romney does not select Portman, he runs a similar risk of losing Ohio to Obama and thereby this election as well.