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Jewish World Review March 29, 2000 / 22 Adar II, 5760
Chris Matthews
Meanwhile, the great middle of the country, from the
Rockies to the Carolinas, is Republican country.
The fight this November will focus on who controls the
industrial states stuck in between: Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Illinois, Michigan.
This is the disputed territory of partisan America.
Democratic and Republican strategists now eye this area
with the same mix of lust and jealousy that militant Indians
and Pakistanis view Kashmir.
Both want it. Both think they need it. Both believe if the
other side gets it, they win the game.
I predict that George W. Bush and his people will play
this continental board game in the most obvious way, by
picking his vice president from this partisan "Kashmir."
I predict Bush will pick Pennsylvania's governor, Tom
Ridge, because of geography, history (he rose from a
working-class background to attend Harvard and win a
pair of Bronze Stars in Vietnam) and personality (Bush
once confessed that he wants a running mate who "likes
me." Apparently his fellow governor does).
Gore cannot play the same game for the simple reason that, with the possible
exception of Illinois senator Dick Durbin, none of the disputed industrial states
boasts a Democrat of sufficient stature to fill Gore's vice presidential shoes. Not
Pennsylvania. Not Ohio. Not Michigan.
So the vice president needs to try a different gambit. He needs to win those big
states in the upper middle of the country with a ticket that packs a wallop from
coast to coast. He needs a veep who, by his current position and political
resume, outranks even the man he's running against.
That candidate is Gov. Gray Davis, 58, of California. A graduate of Columbia
law, he carries Ivy League credentials, as does Gore. He matches Ridge's
Vietnam-won Bronze Star with one of his own. As governor of the country's
largest state, Davis leapfrogs Bush's relentless bragging about being governor of
the "second-largest state."
Most important, Gore-Davis would carry the heft of a truly continental ticket, a
vice president running with the country's No. 1 governor.
For extra credit, a Gore-Davis ticket would provide the Democrats with the
party's most formidable fund-raiser. It would make California the immovable
anchor of the Gore campaign, turning out a huge Latino vote for the chance to
make Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante the state's top executive.
Most important, it would make Al Gore look like a political heavyweight by
refusing to fight over a single portion of the 2000 electoral map, the industrial
Midwest, but instead choosing to sweep the
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