Joe Johns at CNN pens a piece today entitled "Ranking the best and worst VP picks" in which he asks "conservative historian Lee Edwards to rank the VP choices since the 1950s". The top five run as follows:

Number 5: Dick Cheney, "for bringing lots of Washington experience with him".

Number 4: Richard Nixon, for bringing "youth - and California".

Number 3: Al Gore, for bringing "Washington experience to a little-known governor from Arkansas."

Number 2: George H.W. Bush, who "helped unite the Republican Party".

Number 1: Lyndon B. Johnson takes first prize. Says Edwards, "Johnson was the man and he delivered Texas."

This list seems hard to argue with. Not many dispute Johnson as one of the most electorally helpfully running mates in U.S. history. It's hard to argue with Cheney, Nixon, Gore, and Bush 41 as beneficial VP picks. Edwards' four picks for worst running mate selections are not as convincing. They are as follows:

Number 4: Dick Cheney, who makes both lists because while "a great choice at the beginning, he's now one of the most unpopular figures in an unpopular administration".

Number 3: Spiro Agnew, because "he pleaded no contest to tax evasion and money laundering."

Number 2: Dan Quayle, "runner-up for worst choice...was supposed to become the Republican JFK but became a laughingstock to many."

Number 1: Sen. Thomas Eagleton is picked as worst VP choice (by George McGovern in '72) because he was eventually dropped from the ticket after reports of treatments related to his mental health. Says Edwards, "the concerns about his health were disastrous for McGovern's campaign against Nixon."

What's bizarre about this "worst" list is that 3 of the 4 so-called "worst" were of winning tickets. Only Eagleton's ticket lost. Surely the top 4 picks must include mostly members of losing tickets. A more accurate list would hopefully have included Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and John Edwards in 2004.

Ferraro was immediately noted as a gamble for Mondale who wanted to make an attention-grabbing selection. Ferraro did give Mondale an initial boost. But issues regarding her husband's tax returns, conflicts between her pro-choice positions and the Roman Catholic Church, and her lack of foreign policy experience only hurt Mondale's chances in the end.

The second "worst" running mate missing from the list (and Edwards is hardly alone in failing to point this out) is John Edwards. Edwards proved completely inadequate in carrying out his supposed strengths as a running mate: appealing to female and youth voters, competing in southern states (especially his own), and bringing in blue-collar voters in important swing states. The Kerry-Edwards ticket not only failed to carry a single southern state but Bush gained five points among female voters from the 2000 election.

And even more important than Edwards' failure to deliver on his reported advantages was the huge toll his disadvantages had on Kerry, who was daily attacked as being a flip-flopper and weak on national security. With foreign policy as the only issue Kerry consistently trailed Bush throughout the race, the six-year Senator with no military background only hurt Kerry by reinforcing Bush's message that the Bush-Cheney ticket was the one of experience and strength in the War on Terror. Dick Gephardt, who while far less popular with the media when Kerry was making his decision, would have cut into the Bush-Cheney message.

-Greg Bobrinskoy