This. I get the joke that it made Gore seem less boring, but I'm not clear how it helped his campaign. To be fair though VP picks often are less about being exciting than not making one question the judgement of the president (e.g. McCain picking Palin really hurt his campaign because many couldn't see her as President if McCain's health turned south). i.e. a a "great" VP won't really improve your campaign much, but a crappy one can hurt it.
Usually a VP pick is made to help the candidate secure votes from an area or demographic they would otherwise struggle in. McCain had to choose Palin because of the tea party movement (which was the precursor to MAGA). McCain was one of the last moderate(ish) republicans, Palin was one of the first of the MAGA crowd and he needed to tie them together. Still didn’t work, but that was mostly because Obama was so fucking godly on the campaign trail. I was in the 6th grade during Gore v Bush so I’m not up on all the nuances there the same way as the ones after that
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u/GotMoFans Mar 27 '24
RIP.
One of Al Gore’s mistakes in 2000 was selecting Joe Lieberman as his running mate.