John McCain is not a mystery candidate. He has been in public life for decades, everyone knows his basic biography and he hasn’t exactly been a backbencher in Congress. Some awful legislation bears his prominent name. He’s therefore not a cypher candidate like the messianic Obama, and unlike Hillary, McCain is actually more well liked outside his party faithful than within. So to me, at this stage of the game I’m not sure how much difference his veep pick will make for him. He could pick a legit conservative to shore things up with the base, but he’ll still be John McCain. He could pick more moderate Republican and kick conservatives in the teeth one more time, and he’ll still be John McCain. He could even go for broke and pick Joe Lieberman, leaving the GOP with a left-leaning ticket to go up against the Democrats’ leftist or left-leaning ticket. That would be one more kick to conservatives, but would at least signal seriousness on the war and could put some blue states in play. But John McCain would still be John McCain.

All of this leads me to Pat Toomey’s article in the WSJ on this subject. Toomey runs through a list that dismisses Mike Huckabee before moving on to SC Gov Mark Sanford, SC Senator Jim DeMint, IN Rep. Mike Pence, former TX Sen. Phil Gramm, and Steve Forbes.

Interesting picks, all. Interesting, by the way, doesn’t mean good. Though there was one guy shouting “McCain-Huckabee” during McCain’s CPAC speech, Huckabee needs to come home on economic and national security conservatism before he would deserve a spot on any ticket. Sure, he can win in the South. But McCain can probably hold his own in the South without Huckabee.

As for the rest, Sanford would be a good pick. South Carolina is likely to replace him with another serious conservative, so moving him to veep wouldn’t hurt the movement by taking him off the front lines. The hippie punching Jim DeMint is probably my favorite on that list, but he’s much more useful in the Senate right now, especially in opposition to Reid and Pelosi. We need him and Pence in the fight where it’s happening, especially after November. As for Gramm and Forbes, eh. I touted Gramm the other day but I’ve cooled on that since. He has been out of the fight for about 5 years now. Both Gramm and Forbes are good on economics, Gramm is great on many other issues, both are not so sturdy on border security and that’s a McCain weakness that needs help. Forbes might help on McCain’s economic weakness but hasn’t proven that he can win any election anywhere yet.

I doubt McCain goes with any of these picks. Charlie Crist is likely as the popular governor of Florida and probably the man who won the nomination for McCain. Several picks including Christie Todd Whitman would be mistakes. Joe Lieberman might shake things up a lot, but he’s so far to the left on social issues that he’s more useful as a speculative pick than a real one. For a really out of the box pick, try former mayor and spaghetti western gunslinger Clint Eastwood. There is the little matter of Eastwood’s skepticism on the Iraq war, which McCain has pledged his all to win. It’s a very unlikely pick, but I’d love to see him debate pretty much any Democrat on national security. “I know what you’re thinking. Did Iran really halt nuke development in 2003, or 2005? Or did they stop at all? Do you feel lucky, Barack? Well. Do you?” The squint alone would roast the donks.

So who’s McCain going to pick? Beats me. A pick to the left would probably hurt him more than a pick to the right would potentially help him, though a pick to his right is the way to go to shore up the base. But whoever he picks, at the end of the day John McCain will still be John McCain. That’s his blessing and his curse.