Vice Presidential speculation is a lot of fun, mostly because it's so harmless, but we've got to remember the political role of the Vice Presidential nominee. All the discussion of ideological or geographical balance is a distraction from what we're really talking about, which is surrogacy. The Vice President's job -- aside from their Constitutional responsibility -- is to work as the President's number one cheerleader in whatever forum they're best suited. The hard part is picking the forum where you need help.

The President cannot be all things to all people and cannot be in more than one place at one time. They need help. They need surrogates to extend their presence and talk to certain audiences. They need surrogates to compliment and extend. A surrogate talks to specific audiences by specific mediums about specific topics. Vice President Cheney does Chris Wallace and Rush Limbaugh. In other words, he's the President's top surrogate for Southern White men (his base) and the GOP's corporatist wing. Al Gore took a different approach in 2000. He picked Joseph Lieberman to speak to moderate values voters that we're supposedly wobbly on the Democrats.

When we talk about the Democratic nominee for Vice President, we need to know whom they'll be expected to speak with. Simply picking someone because they're from the South or they're moderate doesn't make much sense if it isn't in the context of a political strategy. The strategy might mean shoring up and turning out your base. Or it might be peeling off a few thousand moderate voters in an obscure district in a crucial swing state.

Some say the first rule of picking a Vice President is trust. Others say it's to play foil as the attack dog. In my mind, those are obvious prerequisites that don't mean anything if they can't be translated into electoral politics. Dick Cheney isn't Vice President just because the President trusts him. It's because he plays the modest but critical role of keeping the base happy.  The winner of the Veepstakes has to mean something in the context of the electorate and the Democratic coalition.

This all might be obvious, but it's worth saying. I'm not exactly sure why, for instance, John Edwards was the Vice Presidential nominee in 2004. He wasn't a surrogate for the stoutly anti-war wing of the party. He wasn't a surrogate for Southern white men (the campaign didn't even try in the South). It seems the logic was that he was charming and charismatic and inoffensive. His selection was based purely on tactics -- he would make the ticket more electable -- without actually making the ticket more electable.

I read Jonathan's post on the "Lincoln-Douglas Debate" proposal with a lot of interest. It's a topic that fits into a bigger question on the role of debates. If we put aside the merits and drawbacks of the Lincoln-Douglas format, what's abundantly clear is that nobody has been completely satisfied with this cycle's debates. Republicans were annoyed with the questions selected for the CNN YouTube debate, while Democrats have been consistently unimpressed with the efforts of network moderators. We all remember the famous Dodd Clock, which laid out the lack of speaking time for the unfashionable candidates. Clearly, the debates we're having have a lot of shortcomings.

All of this unhappiness could be resolved if the moderators would just picked better questions. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen. While I'm sure the networks would love to stop catching criticism, the most loyal debate viewers are political junkies who follow the political horse race plot lines. Their ratings are their vindication. For all the criticism of last week's ABC debate, it was the most watched of the election cycle. We need a big rethink on debates.

Some people think the CNN YouTube debates were progress, but their were also some valid concerns that they were only superficially different from the standard MSM fare. If anything, I'd argue that those debates were simply grafting user-driven technology onto a dying medium. The debate format as we know it - two candidates at podiums delivering pre-hashed soundbites while operatives simultaneously spin the press - is nothing worth clinging to. If we're going to go through the effort of putting Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the same stage, then we've surely got to make the product more worthwhile then when we're getting right now.

I'm Sam Levenback. I'm a blogger and a student in Washington, DC. Jonathan has been kind enough to let me help out on the weekends.

This morning's New York Times features a disturbing article that untangles the role of military analysts appearing on network and cable television. These analysts are presented as neutral experts, but most are, in fact, taking their talking points directly from the Department of Defense. Additionally, plenty of these pundits also serve as lobbyists and consultants who crave access to the Pentagon for their business interests. The conflict of interest is pretty clear cut.

I'm not even going to voice any outrage towards the Administration. It's hardly shocking. Personally, I think the real thrust of this story is the utter incompetence of cable news and the networks. This isn't a case of shifty ideological bias or yielding to administration bullying. It's old-fashioned incompetence.

In memos, emails, and transcripts posted by The New York Times, we see a coordinated effort to dupe television producers and talking heads. Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, and Bill O'Reilly are all mentioned by name. It's absolutely humiliating. These are supposed to be journalists, and yet they've been consistently duped by their own military analysts, their own employees. They've been paying experts to come on their shows and give misleading commentary.

"CNN, for example, said it was unaware for nearly three years that one of its main military analysts, General Marks, was deeply involved in the business of seeking government contracts, including contracts related to Iraq. General Marks was hired by CNN in 2004, about the time he took a management position at McNeil Technologies, where his job was to pursue military and intelligence contracts. As required, General Marks disclosed that he received income from McNeil Technologies. But the disclosure form did not require him to describe what his job entailed, and CNN acknowledges it failed to do additional vetting. "We did not ask Mr. Marks the follow-up questions we should have," CNN said in a written statement. In an interview, General Marks said it was no secret at CNN that his job at McNeil Technologies was about winning contracts. "I mean, that's what McNeil does," he said."

It's just so embarrassing. And yet it's also another sad chapter in the media's complete failure to deal equitably and honestly with the Bush Administration.