One thing that I find oddly fun is thinking about possible Pres-VP combinations.

Some that come to mind are obvious: Clinton-Edwards, Obama-Edwards… Each has its own nuances that are neat to explore. But there’s another reason I think it’s interesting. In the business world, if you have a fragmented market–many sellers in a market all competing–it makes sense to try to merge some of the small guys to become a powerhouse. (Obviously, you can take this too far and become an anti-competitive monopoly.) Where this tactic is especially important is when the markets are bad. (We’ve discussed at length whether Ford and GM should merge.)

I think the Democratic race is fragmented. (Republicans, too, but in a different way right now.) We have three candidates all attracting substantial support. I have to wonder what would happen if, say, Obama somehow convinced, say, Edwards to be his running mate. Would they form a powerhouse?

There are a lot of combinations that are laughably improbable. I don’t think we’ll ever see {Clinton, Obama}-{Romney, Giuliani}. They’re at opposite ends of the spectrum, and I think {Clinton, Obama} fans would be turned off that they’d picked {Romney, Giuliani} as a running mate, and vice versa. But I do like the idea of bipartisan couplings. I also don’t think that an Obama-Clinton (or Clinton-Obama) ticket is likely. They’ve spent so much time at each others’ throats that I can’t see it working.

But here are two that I find, to quote Kucinich, viable:

Obama-Richardson: They complement each other well, and, in my opinion, are both awesome candidates. Richardson is far behind in the polls, and thus doesn’t really stand a chance of getting the nomination; I’m far from the first to talk about him being in it for VP. Obama has Senate experience; Richardson has gubernatorial experience. Obama doesn’t have much foreign policy experience; Richardson has heaps of it. Obama brings an exciting, fresh perspective; Richardson brings decades of solid experience. (I’m not implying that Obama has no experience, nor that Richardson is ‘stale’–neither is true.) And neither of them are white, which is neat in a way.

Obama-Huckabee: Hear me out! Of the Republicans, I think Huckabee is my favorite. I certainly don’t agree with every position of his, but there are two things I really like about him. One is that he’s a good, honest guy. I think anything he does will be because he thinks it’s truly the right thing to do, not because it’ll make him rich. I think Obama-Huckabee would be the “cleanest” Administration in history. (Not in borderline-racist “clean and articulate” terms, but in “actually fighting for the American people and not doing anything crooked” terms.) And the second thing is that I love the way he views his faith–a call for him to do good on Earth. A religious, conservative Republican against the death penalty and in favor of helping the poor? Wow-a-wee-wow! There are some big differences between them, and I don’t know how reconcilable they are. But there comes a third benefit, too: done right, I think a bipartisan running ‘couple’ attracts the most votes. A Republican who would never go for Obama-Clinton might be convinced to vote for Obama-Huckabee. Not to mention centrist independents.