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And perhaps it will be: all around the country, near you soon.
In the 1950s-style diner, where the pair moved from table-to-table glad handing and talking unemployment, energy, and football with one tattooed Bears fan, the visuals were inescapable. "Is that his running mate?" one middle-aged woman in a pink tank top asked aloud.
"You get a job offer yet?" a steelworker in a corner booth asked Bayh.
There are signs everywhere, it seems, of Evan Bayh’s ascendency on Obama’s Vice Presidential shortlist, and in Indiana, Obama’s campaign could scarcely send a clearer signal than the multi-city trip the two senators made across the state’s northern corridor yesterday.
By all appearances, Indiana’s junior senator seems amidst a prolonged and public audition as Obama’s number two. Less than a month ago Bayh was making his public debut with Obama, with the Illinois Senator and former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn at a West Lafayette panel discussion on national security at Purdue University.
In the weeks since, Bayh’s been dispatched to morning cable programs as an Obama surrogate. He impressed many in his standoff on Fox News Sunday with Senator Joe Lieberman, who beat out Bayh for the VP nod in 2000 and now supports Republican John McCain. And in the last month, he’s appeared publicly with Obama more often than any of the other politicians widely considered for the job — including Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, and Delaware Senator Joe Biden.
In the pundit proffering, television talking, speculating spectacle that is the veepstakes, Obama’s campaign has been coy but savvy. It seems not only to be deliberately surfing the speculation wave in a number of states, but also churning the tide. It’s planned event after event with Vice Presidential contenders in their home states to garner the added local attention that comes with a "favorite son" in the national spotlight. Nunn, Bayh, and Obama in West Lafayette. Tim Kaine and Michelle Obama in Virginia. Bayh and Obama in Elkhart and Portage. Hillary Clinton in Nevada. It’s unlikely that any of such events would have garnered as splashy coverage if it not for the VP buzz surrounding them.
The Indiana stop, though, was poised to break the mold. It was to come just days before the opening of the Beijing Olympics, an event during which a Vice Presidential selection was previously widely thought to be unlikely. And the timing was titillating for another reason: the travelling press schedule had the campaign plane in South Bend for 21 hours — with only a scheduled townhall that ultimately lasted little more than one. As Bayh arrived in South Bend Tuesday evening concurrently with Obama, would the two meet? Might the two use the time to film television ads for a veep rollout?
Perhaps both happened in plain view.
In the absence of a rollout were the signs of a rollup. Bayh’s rousing speech in Elkhart praised Obama for competing for Indiana’s votes.
"Frankly, for a general election for President, it’s a very unusual thing," Bayh said. "We haven’t had a fall campaign
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for President that’s really been contested in our state for sixty years as Harry Truman’s famous train went back and forth across Indiana several times. . . . This is Senator Obama’s 42nd visit to our state. . . . Barack Obama is with us here today because he cares enough to come. He’s going to listen to us, understand our challenges, and work together to propose practical solutions to the problems we face. That’s the kind of President America needs."
The two embraced and whispered into each other’s ears as Obama took the stage after Bayh’s introduction. Obama called Bayh "one of the finest" Senators in the country.
The addition of the Portage leg of the trip gave Obama and Bayh an hour-and-a-half bus ride together on which to chat — the vice presidency never came up, they say — talking about family and sports. And a camera crew awaited the senators at the Schoops, filming high-definition television-quality footage of the duo. Indeed, multiple cameramen operated independently of the press videographers, and without press credentials. A member of the traveling press described the unusual crew as "very expensive (and aggressive)." When this reporter ended up behind Bayh and Obama, one frenetic Obama aide physically blocked me from entering what she defensively called "our shot."
In fact, the shot’s importance could be vast. If Obama co-opts his $5 million Olympic advertising package to promote his running mate, Wednesday’s footage might be the first and only the campaign has of the two together.
To be sure, it could be a matter of convenience: Portage is barely an hour from Obama’s national headquarters, making for a short drive for videographers in any case, and b-roll footage of Bayh and Obama may be later useful in Indiana even if Bayh isn’t picked as the Vice Presidential nominee.
But now, because the Democratic National Convention will begin August 25, the day after the close of August 8-24 games, Obama’s rollout will compete with some 3,400 hours of NBC-Universal Olympic coverage on NBC, USA, CNBC, MSNBC and the Oxygen network — making paid advertising increasingly important.
And the repeated public forays with Bayh, who unlike other potential veeps is unabashed in proclaiming his interest in the job, could serve as a trial balloon navigated more successfully than the spate of mixed publicity Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine drew last week by submitting to a series of radio and television interviews.
If that’s the case, consider Bayh’s reception to be a kind one. But what might happen next is unclear: Obama is scheduled to take a Hawaiian vacation next week, leaving him with fewer than two weeks in between his return and the convention to announce his pick. At Schoops, Obama said he hadn’t yet made a decision. But how long can he wait before the campaign must begin laying the groundwork for a media blitz?
Standing together a diner booth, each man with his hands symmetrically on his hips, a ticket seemed already on display — at least for the cameras.
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