Veepstakes

The candidate for the challenging party was undergoing a veepstakes.

What America needs now is comedy—so hurray, we're getting ready to elect a Vice-President! Sure, we elect a Boss Man too, but it'll be the Veepstakes that'll provide the laughs.

[Barbara] Mikulski, who is 47, is the least chic of the women mentioned in the veepstakes. Barely 4 feet 11 inches tall, she barrels through the halls of Congress like a small tank. Her facial expressions swing from a pugnacious frown to an impish grin.

If [Spiro] Agnew abandoned his inflammatory rhetoric during the 1972 campaign, he did not abandon his corrosive wit altogether. The more restrained Agnew twitted Sargent Shriver, the Democratic candidate in the Veepstakes, on his personal wealth.

He laughed again and we talked vividly, I recall, on the topic of how many people in Washington are obsessed with where they rank, how they’re perceived. It’s a particularly acute concern in television and politics—ratings, veepstakes, poll numbers, the kind of things that mean everything and nothing in Washington.

Mr. [Chuck] Todd, whose ubiquity as a running-mate handicapper at his network is akin to Mel Kiper Jr.’s as an N.F.L. draft expert on ESPN, said that all the time and energy devoted to the veepstakes these days is well spent.

The above is worth remembering as the presidential race turns the corner into its most feverishly speculative, excessively breathless phase: the veepstakes.

Harris’s choice will come down to “who can have the hard conversations”, a former Harris aide turned US senator said as the “veepstakes” neared their conclusion.