Don’t you believe it!

So Mark Warner is insisting to anyone who will listen that he will not be Barack Obama’s running mate.  I’ve read the words (Bearing Drift) just like everyone else.  I just don’t believe them.

I have two reasons.

Warner’s history with the truth: Mark Warner said he would cut spending as Governor.  State spending rose more than 30.8% during his four years (and General Fund spending rose more than 18.9%).  Mark Warner said he would not raise taxes; less than one year later he was demanding the people of Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia increase their own taxes, and in 2004 he proposed and imposed the largest tax increase in Virginia history.  Now he wants us to believe he would not accept the Vice Presidential nomination.  Sorry, no dice.

Even if Warner is telling the truth now, will he really turn Obama down?  I sincerely doubt it.  History tells us politicians who are more than willing to rule out a hypothetical Vice Presidential nomination react very differently when the real one comes along.  The best example of this was Harry Truman, who promised his constituents, his wife, his mother, the press, and just about everyone else who would listen that he did not want to be FDR’s running mate in 1944.  Truman even gave cogent argument against his own selection.

Then, with Truman in the room, Bob Hannegan, incoming Democratic Party Chairman, called FDR.  The conversation went like this (U.S. Senate):

FDR: Bob, have you got that fellow lined up yet?

Hannegan: No. He is the contrariest Missouri mule I’ve ever dealt with

FDR: Well, you tell him that if he wants to break up the Democratic party in the middle of the war, that’s his responsibility.

(click)

The rest is history.

Now, does anyone really think that Mark Warner – after being told that he can play the pivotal role in electing America’s first African-American President, after being told how much the Democratic Party needs him with the country at war, after being reminded that he can, in fact, run for both VP and Senator at the same time - is actually going to look Barack Obama in the face and say no?

Me neither.

Besides, who will be pressuring him not to take the spot?  Tim Kaine?  He can appoint a caretaker in January of 2009 and run for the job himself in the November special election.  Deeds and Moran?  Ask yourself how Mark Warner could better help them – as a freshman Senator or Vice President of the United States?  Republicans?  He wouldn’t listen to them anyway, and besides, this just means we get to vote against Warner twice!

So even if Warner is telling the truth (and I won’t concede that he is), he’s only telling the truth now.  Should Obama actually ask him to take the VP slot (and right now, I can only see Bill Richardson as a more likely selection), Warner will do it.