As we all know, yesterday an Obama V.P. short list was leaked.  Of course, Obama himself would demure and deny all, but we now at least have a working list.  I don’t intend for this to be an I-told-you-so diary. (I’ve also spent years pulling for Wes Clark, and I'd still be thrilled if he were the choice. But for the time being, it’s not clear whether he is truly in contention.  But it's clear that Reed is at least a short lister.)  But, as we see, Senator Jack Reed has emerged as a short lister.  This despite the fact that he has been continually ignored by short list makers at places like DailyKos, Huffington Post, the networks, etc.  So, I thought I’d write a diary making a best case for him, so that, at minimum, the Progressive community might start making him more central to the VP conversation.

Paul Krugman is a bright man with some dandy feathers in his economist’s cap.  He should feel proud of his accomplishments within his field.  He shares with Mr. Obama a tremendous intellectual curiosity and a gift for the academic.  Each is a man of rigorous study and profound learned intelligence. But leadership is more than learned intelligence. Leading involves the capacity to lead. In democracies, this means generating movements around ideas, developing broad coalitions of support, elevating the discourse across the breadth of the political spectrum to bring people into empathy with the urgency of solving problems. In short, leadership is a game that requires not just learned intelligence; it requires emotional intelligence. And it is the latter that is lacking from Mr. Krugman’s work and worldview.