The Drudge Report has this right now:
President Obama whispered to a top fundraiser this week that he believes GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney wants to name Gen. David Petraeus to the VP slot!I actually think Romney/Petraeus would be a very difficult ticket for Obama/Biden to beat, especially at this "love the troops even if you hate the war" moment -- but it's bizarre that the notion could even be suggested. We don't know much about Petraeus's politics, but there is this hint from a 2008 New Yorker article by Steve Coll:
"The president wasn't joking," the insider explains to the DRUDGE REPORT.
A Petraeus drama has been quietly building behind the scenes.
Romney is believed to have secretly met with the four-star general in New Hampshire....
Petraeus is registered to vote as a Republican in New Hampshire -- he once described himself to a friend as a northeastern Republican, in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller -- but he said that around 2002, after he became a two-star general, he stopped voting.A guy desperately running from his moderate Northeastern Republican past picking another Northeastern moderate? Um, that could get awkward. Of course, Petraeus could pretend he simply never thought about most of the issues a politician has to deal with until just now (the way Supreme Court nominees do, unconvincingly, in their confirmation hearings). Whatever his faults, he doesn't strike me as duplicitous enough to pull that off.
In 2009, he did say he thought Guantanamo should be closed -- a couple of years after Mitt Romney proposed that what the U.S. really needs is to "double Guantanamo."
Petraeus has expressed opposition to torture (although last year he seemed to qualify that opposition). Romney has been unwilling to oppose torture, or even define certain acts as torture.
Oh, and Petraeus has worked for Antichrist Obama throughout Obama's term. Jon Huntsman quit Obama's employ after a couple of years to try to run against him, and that didn't save him in the GOP primaries.
I don't know why I'm reviewing all this -- there were Petraeus-as-running-mate rumors four years ago, and nothing came of those. Petraeus has made his lack of interest in running for office unusually clear.
I just have to wonder if Mitt Romney's ego could endure this, in the event Petraeus was interested. I think Romney would instantly be overshadowed by his running mate. Would he see the ticket as a shrewd way to leverage the goodwill someone else engenders for his own selfish ends? Or would his pride be hurt? I can't tell if he's so cynical he'd happily get to the White House on Petraeus's shoulders or if he's too narcissistic to endure that.
So I don't see this happening -- but if it did, it would demonstrate that all the VP talk emanating from the Romney camp was just bait-and-switch. I've been thinking there's something infantile about the way the Romneyites are handling the running mate situation -- all that "auditioning," all those leaks (have there ever been this many stories about the exquisitely careful labor with which a candidate is settling on his #2?). Romney seems to want his ring kissed by VP wannabes in just the right way, and he wants the media and the public to see his selection process as the manifestation of his excellence and brilliance. Gosh, Mitt, it's all about you, isn't it? But maybe it's all one massive head fake, and Petraeus (or some other wild card) has been the pick all along. In which case the campaign has been screwing with our heads all along, just for the fun of watching us rise to the bait. And that would be really childish.
