Vice-President Kamala Harris has selected the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate and this big decision reflects more conventional history than inside-the-DC-beltway convention wisdom. While pundits focused mainly on which possible choice could help her ticket win a battleground state, their focus was on either Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) or Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona (11 electoral votes). In this hotly competitive race, either selection made good sense in the scramble for a majority of the electoral college.

But we have to go back to 1960 when the young Massachusetts senator John Kennedy picked the Texas senator and majority leader, Lyndon Johnson, to be his running mate to find the last time selecting a candidate who actually brought a state with him was the dominant concern. Johnson and Kennedy hated each other but the ticket carried Texas, so who cared?

Since that time, other factors were in the ascendance. The very conservative governor of California Ronald Reagan opted for the more moderate, establishment, comfortable George HW Bush in 1980. Bush brought credibility and possibly modulation. A decade later, after Reagan and Bush were the two oldest men ever to serve in the White House, 46-year-old........

© The Guardian