Whom Should Trump Choose for VP?

Now that Trump is the certain nominee, nervous conservatives are shifting focus to the bottom of the ticket. Who is Trump’s running-mate going to be? It’s a tricky question.

There are a lot of good options — smart, competent Republicans who would help the ticket: Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, Rob Portman, and Susana Martinez, to name a few at the top of the list. Rubio would help unite the party, and help with Florida. South Carolina governor Nikki Haley would help unite the party, and help with women. Susana Martinez, New Mexico’s governor, is less conservative; she’d help with independents, women, and Hispanics. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio would help in Ohio, and insofar as he’s a reliable conservative, he’d probably help unite the party, too.

But there are problems. None of these people wants the job. Haley and Portman have each ruled themselves out. So has Rubio, more or less, and Martinez has been openly anti-Trump. As have most of the other good VP choices, like South Carolina senator Tim Scott, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, and the quixotic John Kasich.

Kasich is the most confusing name on this list. For a long time, smart people thought he was staying in the race specifically in hopes of becoming Trump’s running-mate — because the only other explanations were fantasy and narcissism. When the general election rolls around, he would certainly be helpful in Ohio, and he would also be marginally useful in reuniting the party. But now he insists he doesn’t want the job, and says he isn’t even sure he can endorse Trump.

Of course, he might be saying that just to avoid the appearance of blind ambition. Kasich is an enigma.

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The problem with everyone else on the list of obvious VP choices is that none of them likes Trump, and none of them wants to be associated with him. They worry that if he gets crushed in the general election, he will tarnish them permanently as enablers of bombast and bigotry — and they all have their careers to consider.

However — Trump’s poll numbers started to go up this week. Quinnipiac had him tied with Hillary in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, Fox had him leading nationally, by three points, and Rasmussen by five. So don’t be surprised if some of these holdouts start to change their tunes. It’s much easier to consider an invitation to be vice president than an invitation to be humiliated.

But if everyone on the good-choice list remains obstinate, that backs Trump into a corner. Either it would leave him with a running-mate as unappealing and bombastic as he is — Sarah Palin, for instance — or he’d have to choose someone sufficiently non-ambitious that his genuine concern for the country would compel him to accept Trump’s offer — if only to try to rein Trump in.

Retired generals Stanley McChrystal and James Mattis have both been discussed in these terms. But there’s a problem with both of them. We know that they’re fine commanders and leaders of men, but we don’t actually know where they stand on any issues outside the war on terror. (At least, I don’t.) And we don’t know how they’d handle a campaign. In the past, each has gotten in trouble for indecorous off-the-cuff remarks — in fact, McChrystal was fired by President Obama for calling Vice President Biden Vice President Bite Me. Neither seems willing to suffer fools, which would make sucking up to the press difficult. And, to boot, McChrystal voted for Obama in ’08.

#share#So allow me to propose an alternative: Robert Gates, secretary of defense to W. Bush and Obama, CIA director under H. W. Bush, and deputy director under Reagan; before that, a longtime CIA officer, and before that, a lieutenant in the Air Force.

He has more experience in government and foreign policy than anyone this side of Henry Kissinger. His credentials are unimpeachable, and bipartisan. His integrity is also unimpeachable; no one believes he has a Machiavellian bone in his body.

#related#He has expressed his distaste for Trump’s remarks on foreign policy. So has everyone else, which is why Gates would be a great comfort on the ticket. He has also been openly critical of his most recent boss, President Obama — though he kept his feelings out of the press until he’d returned to private life. Gates is a sober, thoughtful figure. To borrow something Ted Cruz said during the campaign, you might not want to have a beer with him, but you’d trust him to drive you home at the end of the night. And that’s just what Trump needs. And what we all need in order to feel better about Trump.

When asked if he’d serve in a Trump administration, Gates said that he had stopped updating his résumé — but that he’d consider it, as a matter of duty, and out of concern for America’s men in uniform. I don’t think there’s any doubt that he was entirely sincere.

Trump ought to be giving him a very close look.