Recently, the camp of Senator Hillary Clinton has floated the idea of having her opponent, Senator Obama, be her running mate as Vice-President in the upcoming election. Interestingly, at every opportunity, she points out all of the reasons why he is not Presidential material. Their story goes that he is inexperienced, he will not know what to do if the telephone rings at 3 in the morning, and he associates with certain people that a lot of other people do not like. They disagree on views, plans, and goals. She often points out the differences in their voting records as Senators, yet she is said to be considering him as the second-in-command.

Other than being a bit presumptuous to assume that she will win the nomination, and that Senator Obama would want to be her running mate anyway, it seems to be another attempt by Senator Clinton to be whatever the voters appear to want her to be. It is a very tight race for the Democratic Party nomination with reportedly record numbers of people voting and every vote counting. It appears that the actual nomination may wind up being decided by means other than the actual number of delegates won. Why not devise a scenario where all of those voters could have the “best of both worlds” – they could get Clinton and Obama in one package. But even Senator Clinton was reluctant to be too aggressive with pushing the running-mate issue until it was seen how it would play out with public opinion.

The only problem with this notion is that it calls into question every position that Senator Clinton says that she has on anything. If she fights for months and months against her opponent and attacks his position, it is strange that she could now want such a person as her running mate. As the saying goes, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”. That way, perhaps she can try to please people on both sides of the issue and wind up with all of the votes. One must admit that this makes perfect mathematical sense. It does however, cast much doubt on how strongly she stands on principles.

This is reminiscent of the presidential debate when John Kerry ran unsuccessfully against George Bush. During one debate, when talking about a vote for military funding for the war on terror, Kerry stated that “I voted for the 87 billion dollars before I voted against it.” After the debate, some people may have wondered why everybody on both sides of the funding issue did not love him and vote for him. (There are those that claim that he won that debate.) After all, what other possible position could there be that he hadn’t taken? Surely this would make everybody respect his views — regardless of your position, he voted like you would have! People with strong principles called into question what his real position was though and, possibly not receiving adequate explanation of the flip-flop, wound up voting the way that they did.

Without going into whatever position Senator Clinton may take on an issue, one must admit that it is hard to be against someone when their exact position is unclear or uncommitted. Hard that is, unless you are someone who believes that a strong stand on an issue – along with a clear explanation of your reasons for your strong stand – is an important trait that you look for in your next President.

You may be against a politician’s position and that is fine. It is the democratic process and that is your right. I may have a different position and that is my right as well. Sometimes though, it is not which “something” that you stand for that is important, but just that you stand for something.