Veep Stakes: Fred Smith

an interesting outside the box choice- perhaps a saner Perot.

[rquoter]Delivery Man
When you absolutely, positively need a veep overnight.

By Jim Geraghty

The overwhelming perception in political circles is that anyone worth considering for vice president is already a household name, or at least well-known in political circles. This has led, in the conventional wisdom, to the dismissal of several rising GOP stars — Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal? Not ready yet. Sarah Palin? Alaska’s too far away and too small a proving ground. Tim Pawlenty? The Minnesota governor is barely noticed on the national scene.

If three sitting governors can be dismissed as “unknowns,” one can only imagine the chattering class’ reaction to the sudden buzz about Frederick W. Smith.

Most Americans have never heard of Smith, a McCain campaign co-chair. But they know, usually admire, and have probably used the company he built from the ground up, Federal Express (today simply FedEx).

Smith isn’t even a well-known figure within the McCain camp, although he fits a recurring theme in McCain’s remarks about “dollar-a-year men,” bright figures from the corporate sector coming to Washington to overhaul failing bureaucracies and spur new and innovative approaches to government services.

For a man most Americans couldn’t identify in a police lineup, Smith has led a remarkable life. His grandfather was a steamboat captain, and his father, who died when Smith was four, built from scratch a regional bus line that became part of Greyhound. His mother and uncles raised him, and he learned to fly a plane as a teenager. While at Yale University, he was a classmate and fraternity brother of George W. Bush and worked weekends as a charter pilot. The most often-cited anecdote in profiles of Smith is the story of a paper for a class at Yale detailing the need for reliable overnight delivery in the information age, about a decade before the birth of Federal Express. Smith recollects he got his “usual C” for the idea. He was a member of Skull and Bones, and one of his closest friends was John Kerry.

After getting a bachelor’s in economics, Smith joined the Marines and served two tours of duty in Vietnam, receiving the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts. (Interestingly, he has called the Vietnam War “one of the great historical mistakes of all times.”)

But Smith was still devoted to the overnight-shipping concept, and raised $80 million from investors to found Federal Express. The business’ first two years were chaotic; another oft-cited anecdote is that in 1973, he was in such dire need of cash that he flew to Las Vegas, won $27,000 at blackjack, and wired the money back to his struggling company.

Federal Express grew, of course, into an icon of modern business and one of the great American success stories, perennially ranking on Fortune magazine’s industry lists, including World’s Most Admired Companies, America’s Most Admired Companies, the 100 Best Companies to Work For, and the Blue Ribbon Companies List.

Smith played himself in the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away, and is getting involved in financing film production with the company making The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.

There is little doubt that as a CEO, Smith was indeed a leader; he has constantly touted the importance of rewarding workers and building loyalty.



Smith is a bit more tied to right-of-center political causes than one might initially think. He’s a member of the Business Roundtable and the Cato Institute, and is co-chairman of the Energy Security Leadership Council. (John Judis denounced Smith in his book The Paradox of American Democracy as an example of a politically involved business leader who embraces “a kind of irresponsible individualism.”) He served as chairman of the U.S.-China Business Council and the French-American Business Council, was co-chairman of the U.S. World War II Memorial Project, and served on the boards of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Mayo Foundation.

(He would probably be the first vice president who ever called the late military journalist David Hackworth “a national treasure.”)

While Smith’s life story and hands-on experience managing a large, successful corporation in the era of globalization would be a lovely addition to any future administration, Smith’s potential flaws as a running mate are clear. He has never held elected office, nor sought it, which would complicate the “experience” charge used against Obama. He speaks with a light Tennessee lilt, and comes across as brainy and soft-spoken in interviews. But it remains unknown whether that style would be effective on the campaign trail. Could he be an attack dog? How would he handle a slick jab from, say, Sen. Joe Biden in a debate?

(Smith’s thin political background may have a tempting upside: The DNC’s attack sheet on Smith is embarrassingly thin, consisting of “Smith’s company spent $6.5 million lobbying Congress last year and its PAC contributed $2.2 million to federal candidates over the last 4 years.” Horrors.)

Were McCain to select Smith, the attacks would be pretty predictable: A corporate CEO? A man who was compensated $32 million last year, and whose compensation has been almost $90 million over the past five years?

Another old (63) white male?

While Smith’s honesty is blunt and refreshing, his assessment of his own flaws might give some voters pause:

The reason I never lost confidence is because I never believed that the consequences of losing were as bad as some other people might have thought, you know? “Oh my goodness, I’ve lost my money!” or what have you. I mean, I just wasn’t motivated along those lines. And I was very, very, very sure that what we were doing was extremely important and was destined to be successful. So that’s the definition I think of an insane person, or a zealot. And most entrepreneurs, I think you would find, have that sort of green wire laid in there just a little bit cross-wise. And they begin to get focused on something, and they believe in the idea or themselves far beyond what they probably should.​

One member of the McCain team thinks that among the recently mentioned possibilities, Smith is a relative longshot. But after a relatively low profile, his name has arisen in two lists from opposing sources — the DNC’s hit list, preemptively denouncing seven possible running mates for McCain, and William Kristol’s column in the New York Times.

For now, Smith remains a possible member of a future McCain cabinet, and a very outside-the-box possibility for a nominee whose instinctive inclination is to be a maverick. Politicians are always tempted to promise overnight results; Smith would be one of the few men who can say he actually produced them, with a delivery guarantee

Jim Geraghty writes the “Campaign Spot” blog on NRO.[/rquoter]

 

and Bill Kristol gives a broad overview of the background and possible thinking inside the McCain campaign.

[rquoter]How to Pick a V.P.
By WILLIAM KRISTOL

When you try to talk with McCain staffers about vice-presidential prospects, as I did last week, the normally garrulous become guarded and the usually talkative turn taciturn. Still, here’s what I was able to discern.

John McCain apparently intends to announce his pick after the Democratic convention. There’s been thought given to announcing McCain’s selection the day after Barack Obama’s Thursday night Aug. 28 acceptance speech, to try to minimize Obama’s postconvention bounce.

But the current inclination is to wait until after Labor Day weekend, which ends with President Bush’s speech Monday, the first night of the G.O.P. convention. Then the McCain camp would hope to seize attention Tuesday with the V.P. announcement. A strong pick, followed by the V.P. nominee’s remarks Wednesday and then McCain’s speech Thursday, could provide a good launch into the last 60 days of the campaign.

So, who would be a strong pick? Some V.P. candidates fit one theory of the campaign, others another. And there seem to be at least four competing theories in the McCain camp, which, while not entirely mutually exclusive, point in different vice-presidential directions.

1. We’re going to defeat Obama straight up.

If McCain is ahead of or close to Obama in the polls, there will be a strong temptation to do no harm with the V.P. choice. The leading noncontroversial selections — broadly acceptable to Republicans, conservative but not too conservative, young but not too young — are Tim Pawlenty, the second-term governor of Minnesota, and Rob Portman, former Ohio congressman, Bush trade representative and budget director.

2. We need to accentuate Obama’s key vulnerability — inexperience.

If McCain’s central theme is going to be that he’s ready and Obama isn’t, he needs a running mate who reinforces that message — someone experienced who’d be seen as ready to govern. This points to former rival Mitt Romney, whom McCain has come to respect, or former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, whom McCain likes. It’s true that Ridge is pro-choice, which might be a problem. Or could the pick of Ridge signal to independents that McCain is broadening the party, while pro-lifers could be reassured that Ridge would defer to President McCain in this area?

3. Don’t fight the public desire for change; co-opt it.

The public wants change but is nervous about Obama. Why not allow people to vote for experience and the next generation of leadership at the same time?

This implies a young and different V.P.: the 37-year-old governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal; 44-year-old Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska; or Eric Cantor, the 45-year-old Virginia congressman. Party pros would have fainting spells about the unseasoned Jindal and Palin in particular — but party pros are often wrong, and if Jindal or Palin performed well as candidates, the upside would be considerable.

The two young governors also have this advantage: They’re very popular with conservatives, especially social conservatives. And they’re real reformers. They’ve begun to do in Baton Rouge and Juneau what many voters would like to see done in Washington. Principled conservatism and vigorous reform could be a winning combination.

4. The public is really sick of politics as usual in Washington.

In his convention speech, McCain could say something like this:

“I will give you a reform administration that will put politics aside to work for all Americans. I pledge to turn the page on 16 years of often petty and mean-spirited partisanship so we can tackle the big challenges we face. So I pledge that neither I nor my vice president will seek re-election. Neither I nor my vice president will spend a day, an hour, a minute campaigning or raising money — not for ourselves nor for anyone else. There will be no political office in my White House — there will be no place for a Dick Morris, or (with all due respect) a Karl Rove.”

This opens up several unconventional V.P. possibilities. They include some who would reinforce the notion of a war presidency above politics, like Senator Joe Lieberman and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Or perhaps someone with economic or domestic policy expertise — like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, old McCain friend and FedEx C.E.O. Fred Smith or new McCain insider and former EBay C.E.O. Meg Whitman.

Most of the campaign staff strongly prefers a selection from the first two categories — do no harm or reinforce experience. McCain himself, on the other hand, is intrigued by the bolder possibilities of youth or bipartisanship.

And he could be especially intrigued by Sarah Palin and Meg Whitman. I run into plenty of moderate and conservative women who don’t consider themselves feminists but would be pleased to see a qualified woman on the ticket.

Especially if Obama picks a man, rejecting hope and change in favor of the same old patriarchy — won’t McCain be tempted to say: cherchez la femme?[/rquoter]

i like the idea of Sarah Palin, although it doesn't help with any particular state, it'd do wonders for the image of the campaign.