The case for Gore goes something like this: He's become an outsider but still knows how Washington works. He's got impeccable credentials on global issues, from climate change to national defense. That argument, however, overlooks the fact that, having done the job for eight years, he's extremely unlikely to want it again.
One intriguing possibility, if Obama doesn't target a single state or try to amplify the change message: Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island. That state's four reliably Democratic electoral votes aren't in doubt and Reed is unknown nationally, but he could help Obama in several ways.
He's a Catholic with working-class roots (his father was a school janitor), and could enhance the ticket's appeal to those swing voters. He has expertise on issues at the center of the campaign debate, economics and the housing crisis.
More important, he would offset Obama's lack of national security experience. Reed, 58, has a reputation as a serious thinker and is a respected voice on defense matters. He's a West Point graduate and an Army Ranger, with views that are right in line with Obama's. He voted against the 2002 Iraq war resolution and became an early critic of the way the war was fought while working to increase the size of the Army.
He's got an attractive wife and toddler at home, which might produce the sort of family tableau that boosted the Clinton-Gore ticket (Reed met his future wife, a Senate staffer, on an official trip to Afghanistan with McCain).
Like Obama, he's got a Harvard Law degree and spent time teaching at the college level (West Point). The two men are reported to have a good personal relationship.
Reed isn't flashy, and he wouldn't upstage the star. If he joins Obama's coming visit to Iraq (it would be Reed's 12th since the war began), his running-mate stock could soar.
For McCain, the underdog, the electoral map could demand a more conventional running mate.
That's why Mitt Romney has emerged as a consensus VP pick. He could help the ticket in many ways, including in the key state of Michigan, where he's got family ties.
But McCain doesn't like him. And for a guy who values his buddies much more than most politicians, the idea of having Mitt right down the hall for the next four or eight years could be extremely hard to swallow.
