Opinion | Who should Kamala Harris choose as her vice president? |

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The so-called Veepstakes are Washington’s favorite reality show — like “Love Island” without the attractive people. But we’ve seen over the past few decades that the vice presidency can actually be a pretty consequential job. Dick Cheney ran national security policy. Joe Biden oversaw massive spending programs and served as an ambassador to the Hill.

So we asked 20 Post columnists how they would rank Kamala Harris’s options. I also joined my awesome colleagues Eugene Robinson and Perry Bacon Jr. to skip ahead to the governing part and discuss what Harris would need in her vice president.

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First, the ranking. The columnists were asked to choose six candidates and put them in order of who would be Harris’s wisest choice. Here are the results of our very scientific survey:

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Matt Bai: Leaving aside electoral strategy for the moment, what kind of vice president would benefit a President Harris most, and why?

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Eugene Robinson: Well, I guess I’ll start with something she doesn’t need. George W. Bush needed Cheney’s experience in foreign policy (although I question whether that’s what the country needed). Harris has had a first-rate education in international affairs over the past 3½ years, so she doesn’t need someone to shore that up. Which is good because none of the principal contenders could help much on that score.

Perry Bacon Jr.: I live in a red, rural state, and I felt at times that the Biden-Harris administration was not very plugged into what was happening outside of Washington, elite college campuses and a few regions of the world (Europe, Middle East). Project 2025 has already been happening in about half the country. Govs. Andy Beshear (Ky.), Tim Walz (Minn.) and Roy Cooper (N.C.) have been governing in states that I doubt Harris or her top aides (or Biden’s) have spent much time in. They have not spent their careers largely in D.C. They know the importance of state and local government and policy and where the feds can help. And they would bring knowledge of rural America.

Matt: Yeah, I would say something similar, Perry. I do think it would help her to have a veep who has experience implementing policy on the ground and knows the politics of divided states. California isn’t exactly the rest of America, and neither, of course, is Washington. That would argue for a governor, right?

Perry: Governor, yes. Maybe there is an nonprofit executive or business leader, too. In terms of governing, Pete Buttigieg would be good — running a small city, running an important Cabinet agency, doing a policy area that is not in the news all the time but really matters (transportation).

Gene: I would point out that as California attorney general, Harris did have experience on the state level — and that California has rural areas, too.

Matt: Gene, who’s your top pick?

Gene: My first pick is Beshear, actually. A Democrat who got reelected as governor in Kentucky obviously knows how to relate to people who might not warm to Harris.

Matt: That makes a ton of sense. I like a few of the governors. I guess my fear would be that they aren’t nearly as well-vetted or covered by the media as they were, say, 25 years ago. It’s no longer like jumping from AAA to the majors, in terms of the national spotlight. More like High A to the majors. (I like baseball metaphors.)

Gene: That lack of vetting makes any pick a risk, doesn’t it? That’s one reason I like Beshear over, say, Josh Shapiro. Beshear at least has been governor for a while and been through two election cycles. Shapiro just got to the governor’s mansion in Pennsylvania.

Matt: What if I suggested to you that she might need a bridge to the business community? Businesses matter, and I don’t think they necessarily trust her. That was a problem for Barack Obama, in my view.

Gene: I, too, wonder if somebody who really understands the business community might be very helpful to Harris. She just doesn’t have that experience, and I think business types are likely to be wary of her.

Matt: So here’s an out of the box idea, along the lines of a Lloyd Bentsen pick in 1988: How about Sen. Mark Warner (Va.)? Someone older with serious policy cred, ties to business and governing experience in a purple state. Plus fundraising ability. (Leaving aside that you’d have to win back the seat.) Or Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.), who’s sort of like Warner but younger and from a state with a Democratic governor.

Perry: This is an ideological statement but I think business will always have access to the government and the president. They get two Cabinet appointments (Treasury and Commerce) essentially designated for them. I would much rather have a person who is a real spokeswoman for nonurban people, who have a powerless secretary (Agriculture) and not much else. Beshear acts like a kind of mayor for Appalachia, and I think that is useful.

Gene: I don’t know if you can leave aside the fact that choosing Warner would guarantee losing the Senate, because Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin would appoint a replacement, right? Bennet is an interesting idea. Perry is right, though, about speaking to nonurban people. That may be the Democratic Party’s biggest weakness, and there are so few Democrats who really understand life in America outside the metropolitan areas.

Matt: That is a huge risk. And Perry, you make a persuasive point. If you choose strong Cabinet secretaries, as I think Biden did, then you should already have your liaisons to business. (Provided you don’t undermine them with your rhetoric.) How do we feel about Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker? He knows business and has a strong record. Plus I’d kind of like to see a billionaire mock Donald Trump’s business acumen.

Perry: One other thing: Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan in particular have passed a lot of legislation the past two years. I get that senators in theory know their colleagues, but there is a real skill in setting priorities, working with the whole caucus and passing an agenda that appeals broadly. Walz and Whitmer have done that. So has Pritzker, although Illinois has bigger margins in the legislature, so it is easier.

Gene: The only problem with Pritzker is that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would have to point at him when he inveighs against “billion-yahs.”

Matt: I consider that a plus. I think we all agree, anyway, that Harris seems best served by a governor. Which leads me to a trivia question: Who was the last sitting governor to become vice president? Was it Spiro Agnew?

Gene: Wasn’t Mike Pence still governor of Indiana when he was elected?

Perry: Yes, true.

Matt: Oh, yes, I completely forgot about Pence. He’s quite forgettable these days.

Perry: Well one other thought: Is the vice president in theory a really smart person who knows a lot of stuff and can give good advice? Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) are really, really knowledgeable. I know they won’t get picked, but I would want them in the room to ask a sharp question or push back on a lazy idea

Gene: Harris should put Klobuchar and Warren in her “kitchen cabinet,” at least. She can have them on speed dial.

Matt: I won’t argue with you guys about Warren. But I do think there are different kinds of advice, and what we seem to be saying is that having governed in a complicated state might make you the most valuable voice in some of these discussions.

Gene: Agreed. And I totally endorse Perry’s point about someone who knows a lot about rural and small-town America.

Matt: Also, it would be nice to have a White House where not all the advisers come from the Hill. I don’t think that’s helping anyone see beyond the general balkanized mindset of Washington.

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Opinion | Who should Kamala Harris choose as her vice president?

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