2008 Presidential stuff

John J. Miller has an article on NRO on what Republican presidential aspirants need to do in 2006.

In May and June of last year, I did a write-up of various names being thrown about as possible presidential contenders for each party:
Republicans (plus a mention of Huckabee here and here as I forgot him in the first post)
Democrats
These could use some updating, but I'll hold off as we're still more than two years from the first primary vote. I'll probably update in the Spring.

Back to the article, though, it mentions Tim Pawlenty (governor of Minnesota) as a potential running mate. I've seen many mentions of governors as potential running mates in 2000 and 2004, but the thought suddenly occurred to me: "When was a governor (or former governor) last a vice-presidential nominee?" Well, it turns out that in the second half of the 20th century, there were only two nominees that were governors or former governors, and, coincidently, both were in 1968. Spiro Agnew, then-governor of Maryland, was the Republican nominee, and Edmund Muskie (former governor of Maine) was the nominee for the Democrats. As Agnew won and was re-nominated in 1972, you could technically count it as three, but I'm sticking with two. Exactly how much this means, I'm not sure, but it does seem that governors are not quite the popular running mates they're portrayed as.

Also, I notice that the National Journal poll came up with the same Republican front-runner that I've been going with, which always makes me happy (the poll was of well-connected people rather than your normal telephone poll of Joe Schmoes).