Tom Vilsack? Hillary Clinton is thinking of choosing former Iowa governor and agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack?

Talk about an option who’s been sitting on the shelf a while. Vilsack was reportedly one of the finalists to be John Kerry’s running mate in 2004. He’ll have the country yearning for the unpredictable, edgy rebelliousness of Tim Kaine. He’s been in Obama’s cabinet since the beginning, but his name recognition must be on par with the other secretaries getting veep buzz, Labor’s Tom Perez and HUD’s Julian Castro.

You think Hillary’s confident about the general election? Picking Tom Vilsack right now is the political equivalent of a football team lining up in victory formation in the third quarter.

What, did Hillary and Vilsack bond over their shared love for destroying public records?

Vilsack was caught up in a controversy over the e-mails pertaining to the Iowa Department of Economic Development Foundation. E-mails requested by the Des Moines Register under Iowa’s open-records law had been “inadvertently” destroyed. Vilsack partially blamed the problem on himself, saying, “I’m 52 years old, and I don’t know much about technology. I don’t even know how to send a response to an e-mail, that’s how technologically deficient I am.”

Tom Vilsack is the agriculture secretary who argued that government subsidies are justified by recipients feeling underappreciated.

So what does the character of rural America have to do with subsidies for rural America?
TV: It is an argument. There is a value system that’s important to support. If there’s not economic opportunity, we can’t utilize the resources of rural America. I think it’s a complicated discussion and it does start with the fact that these are good, hardworking people who feel under-appreciated.

He argued that expanded use of food stamps counts as a form of economic stimulus.

He’s a relentless advocate of corn ethanol, and among those singing the praises of the U.S. Navy deployment of the “Great Green Fleet.” Surely, ISIS is shaking in their boots.

Vilsack presided over the later chapters of Pigford scandal, the federal government’s wildly profligate $4.4 billion program to compensate minority and women farmers for alleged discrimination. Many recipients of the compensation never claimed to be victims of discrimination.

He ran for president in 2008; his campaign lasted 85 days. Just two weeks before he quit, his campaign issued a press release “asserting that fundraising was going well and that the candidate had the resources for the long haul.” Somehow in that three-month span, he signed lucrative corporate-consulting contracts while running for president.

Meanwhile, in that short span he amassed $400,000 in debt. Guess who came to his rescue: Hillary Clinton, who he promptly endorsed. The Clinton and Vilsack camps insisted the sequence of events was not a quid pro quo.

Hillary Clinton is expected to name her pick Friday — emulating the strategy of John McCain in 2008 and attempting to interrupt any post-convention bump for her rival. Whatever one thinks of Sarah Palin today, the McCain strategy largely worked — the selection of Palin was sufficiently surprising and exciting to have people quickly forgetting about the Democrats’ convention in Denver.