Is it before the nominating convention or at it?
Technically, there are no major party candidates at present for either Vice Presidency or Presidency, as that choice is in fact made at the quadrennial presidential nominating conventions scheduled for this July (Democratic) and September (Republican). In point of fact, of course, it’s a done deal that Mr. Bush will be renominated by the Pubbies, and Mr. Kerry has enough delegates committed to him that, barring revelation of him and Osama Bin Laden taking turns sodomizing an eight-year-old, there is no question that he will be the Democratic candidate.
The conventions nominate the Vice Presidential candidates as well, but it is a long-standing custom/tradition that the choice of the VP is made by the just-nominated nominee for President, and the convention, after a possible opportunity for favorite-son-ism, ratifies his choice.
In the absence of a brokered convention, where tradeoffs and back-room agreements are made to get a nominee with a majority, the Presidential nominee (or the man assured of being that nominee) gets to announce his choice as and when he feels it most effective to do so. Note that John Nance Garner and LBJ were both chosen as VP in deals to get their running mates the nomination – “we’ll throw our votes to you if you agree to make our man the VP.” So in such cases the choice is in fact made at the convention. But Mr. Kerry will announce his choice for his running mate when he feels it best to do so, and Mr. Cheney is likely to be run for re-election as VP barring unforeseen developments.
The original idea was to heighten suspense (and therefore attention) at the national convention by waiting for the nominee to announce his running mate at the very last minute. Also, for a long time, candidates didn’t put a lot of thought into their choice of runing mate.
A whole series of mishaps ensued.
Kennedy accepted a deal to make Johnson his VP. However well Kennedy and Johnson may have been able to work together, a big bunch of Kennedy supporters didn’t care for Johnson.
Nixon chose Sprio Agnew without much thought, basically to win Maryland. Agnew turned out to have accepted bribes for state contracts, and even continued to receive cash after he was elected VP.
McGovern chose Thomas Eagleton as a last-minute compromise. Almost immediately Eagleton was discovered to have been hospitalized and treated for depression and was forced to quit the ticket.
At the 1980 Republican convention, stories of Reagan’s courting Gerald Ford for the VP job overshadowed everything else, especially when Ford publicly declined.
More often since then, candidates have decided to announce their running mates before the convention, figuring they’ll get buzz at the time of the announcement, more buzz during the convention, and the whole process won’t seem so rushed.
But there’s no “official” guideline to do it one way or the other.
Actually, I understand Nixon put a lot of thought into this, and even had polls run to see who to choose.
The result of the polling was that pretty much every well-known potential republican running mate cost im votes, in that they each had some group of voters who disliked them enough to vote against the Nixon-xxx ticket. Nixon got the most votes running alone, without any running mate!
Well, he couldn’t actually do that, so he did the next best thing. He chose someone almost completely unknown as his running mate, figuring if nobody knew who Spiro was, nobody could object to voting for the ticket.
Unfortunately, he didn’t check him out enough, and ended up chosing a crook as his running mate.
(But then, “birds of a feather flock together”.)
I can only think of one Presidential candidate who announced his choice for running mate BEFORE the convention, and that was Ronald Reagan in 1976. While he was running for the GOP nomination against incumbent President Gerald Ford, Reagan announced that his pick would be Senator Richard Schweiker, a liberal Republican from Pennsylvania. Reagan was already trailing Ford, at that point, and was hoping the choice of Schweicker would alleviate concerns from moderate Republicans that Reagan was too far to the right.
As it turned out, Schweicker didn’t help Reagan, and Ford won the nomination.
Otherwise, as far as I can remember, no candidate has announced the selection of a Vice Presidential candidate until AFTER receiving the party’s official nominatiuon, during the convention itself. There’s no rule that a candidate HAS to wait- and John Kerry would certainly be free to name someone tomorrow, if he wished- but it’s more likely he’ll follow the standard procedure, and name his choice the day after he’s officiallyu nominated at the Democratic convention.
I thought Bush Sr. named Quayle a few days before the convention opened? (Don’t have a cite, though - just going by memory.)
In 1956 Adlai Stevenson threw the choice of the VP open to the convention and it was a big deal as various candidates got to get up and make speeches trying to encourage the delegates to go to them.
Eventually, Estes Kefauver got the nomination (which was pretty useless as Eisenhower clobbered Stevenson), but the convention did put a young Massachusetts senator named John Kennedy in the national spotlight.
When Reagan tabbed Schweikert, his supporters tried to force Ford in to naming a VP nominee early also. But Ford resisted and his delegates called it “The Misery Loves Company” idea.
1976 was the last time there was even a whisper of a second ballot happening. I don’t even think Ted Kennedy came as close in 1980 as Reagan did in 1976,
I remember it as happening at the convention, vividly only because the commentators kept referring to Quayle as “third generation inheirited wealth” which didn’t say much for him.
Bush officially announced Quayle as his running mate on August 15, 1988 and the convention opened in New Orleans on August 17.
Clinton picked Gore a few weeks before the 1992 convention, while we’re at it.
Side question: It used to be normal for presidential candidates to let the convention pick their running mates - but the last time I *know * that happened was 1944, when FDR let them go with Truman. Can anyone pin down the change of custom better than that? Barkley in 1948, maybe?