Who should Kamala Harris choose as her vice president?

What does she need in her running mate to govern well?

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The so-called Veepstakes are Washington’s favorite reality show — like “Love Island” without the attractive people. But we’ve seen over the past few decades that the vice presidency can actually be a pretty consequential job. Dick Cheney ran national security policy. Joe Biden oversaw massive spending programs and served as an ambassador to the Hill.

So we asked 20 Post columnists how they would rank Kamala Harris’s options. I also joined my awesome colleagues Eugene Robinson and Perry Bacon Jr. to skip ahead to the governing part and discuss what Harris would need in her vice president.

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First, the ranking. The columnists were asked to choose six candidates and put them in order of who would be Harris’s wisest choice. Here are the results of our very scientific survey:

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Matt Bai: Leaving aside electoral strategy for the moment, what kind of vice president would benefit a President Harris most, and why?

Eugene Robinson: Well, I guess I’ll start with something she doesn’t need. George W. Bush needed Cheney’s experience in foreign policy (although I question whether that’s what the country needed). Harris has had a first-rate education in international affairs over the past 3½ years, so she doesn’t need someone to shore that up. Which is good because none of the principal contenders could help much on that score.

Perry Bacon Jr.: I live in a red, rural state, and I felt at times that the Biden-Harris administration was not very plugged into what was happening outside of Washington, elite college campuses and a few regions of the world (Europe, Middle East). Project 2025 has already been happening in about half the country. Govs. Andy Beshear (Ky.), Tim Walz (Minn.) and Roy Cooper (N.C.) have been governing in states that I doubt Harris or her top aides (or Biden’s) have spent much time in. They have not spent their careers largely in D.C. They know the importance of state and local government and policy and where the feds can help. And they would bring knowledge of rural America.

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Matt: Yeah, I would say something similar, Perry. I do think it would help her to have a veep who has experience implementing policy on the ground and knows the politics of divided states. California isn’t exactly the rest of America, and neither, of course, is Washington. That would argue for a governor, right?

Perry: Governor, yes. Maybe there is an nonprofit executive or business leader, too. In terms of governing, Pete Buttigieg would be good — running a small city, running an important Cabinet agency, doing a policy area that is not in the news all the time but really matters (transportation).

Gene: I would point out that as California attorney general, Harris did have experience on the state level — and that California has rural areas, too.

Matt: Gene, who’s your top pick?

Gene: My first pick is Beshear, actually. A Democrat who got reelected as governor in Kentucky obviously knows how to relate to people who might not warm to Harris.

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Matt: That makes a ton of sense. I like a few of the governors. I guess my fear would be that they aren’t nearly as well-vetted or covered by the media as they were, say, 25 years ago. It’s no longer like jumping from AAA to the majors, in terms of the national spotlight. More like High A to the majors. (I like baseball metaphors.)

Gene: That lack of vetting makes any pick a risk, doesn’t it? That’s one reason I like Beshear over, say, Josh Shapiro. Beshear at least has been governor for a while and been through two election........

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