Now on to the veep guessing game

WASHINGTON -- The speculation is over. Let the speculation begin.Primary season ended with Barack Obama clinching the Democratic presidential nomination.So what's next? Trying to figure out who will be vice president, of course.Who Obama chooses as his running mate will say a great deal about the kind of campaign he intends to run. No one outside his inner circle has any idea of when he will announce his decision. In essence, however, he has three choices.Pick Hillary: Sen. Clinton's supporters argue that she has earned the right to second place on the ticket, after her strong campaign and close finish, and Clinton told New York lawmakers Tuesday that she would be receptive to an offer.Offering Clinton the vice-presidential nomination might help to assuage the anger of many women who feel sexism, especially within the media, helped rob their candidate of what should have been her victory. A recent poll has almost half of white women surveyed viewing Obama negatively, up from a third in February.Putting Clinton on the ticket might also help convert one of her strongest arguments into reality: that she is better able than Obama to connect with lower-income white voters in Appalachia and the Midwest, and can deliver key swing states such as Ohio to the Democrats.On the downside, Clinton comes with pretty strong negatives of her own: About 40 percent of Americans say they would never vote for her. Asking people to vote for a black president and a female vice president is a large test of American tolerance. And Clinton comes with an opinionated husband who was president himself and would have plenty of advice for the new one.Pick a Hillary surrogate: According to one line of reason, the best way to unify the party and attract Clinton Democrats without having to live with the Clintons themselves is to pick one of her strongest supporters. Two candidates are most often mentioned: Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio and Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania. Both campaigned tirelessly for Clinton, who won both states. Strickland might help deliver his swing state in November. Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh is also a possibility.The problem with such candidates is that many female Clinton supporters will not consider any white male politician an adequate substitute for Clinton herself. And history suggests that vice presidential candidates actually have only a limited ability to deliver a key state. It hasn't really happened since Lyndon Johnson brought Texas home for John Kennedy in 1960.Pick a reflection: Rather than balancing the ticket, presidential candidates often pick a number two who amplifies it, just as Bill Clinton picked Al Gore, another young, Southern moderate, to run with him in 1992. If Obama heads in that direction, two candidates come quickly to mind. The first is former North Carolina senator and former opponent for the presidential nomination John Edwards. Edwards and Obama looked great on stage together, when Edwards officially endorsed his former rival in May.Virginia Sen. Jim Webb is another attractive candidate. Virginia is a potential swing state this year, and Webb contributed to that with his razor-thin senatorial victory in 2006. Like Obama, he is a fine writer, but unlike Obama, he has a deep background in the military, having served with distinction in Vietnam and in Ronald Reagan's cabinet as secretary of the Navy, although he strongly opposed the Iraq war.These are the names most mentioned as possible vice presidential choices for Obama. But presidential candidates have a tendency to pick running mates seemingly from out of left field, or even a hat. Remember Dan Quayle? Spiro Agnew?Because pundits are constantly in search of things to mull over, many trees will die to feed the journalistic frenzy over Obama's choice for vice president. One thing to bear in mind, however: There is no real evidence that, apart from Johnson and Texas in 1960, a vice presidential candidate ever contributed much to getting a president elected.E-mail John Ibbitson at jibbitson(at)globeandmail.com.