I trust, or rather I hope, that Peggy Noonan is kidding or waxing poetic when she suggests that Tim Kaine’s everyman (read: cheap) haircut is reason to select him as VP. She seems enamored of the notion of an ordinary, bland ,and non-threatening character a heartbeat away from the Presidency. Worse, I fear that the Obama camp might agree.

The Obama camp, as seen in their frenzied overrreaction to the first spate of anti-Obama books seems consumed by the notion that Americans might think their candidate too exotic or too elitist for the presidency. (They might be better advised to start worrying about his policy positions and abysmal national security judgment.) Hence, they might latch on to Kaine, whose most defining characteristic is, as Noonan suggests, his entirely non-threatening and unexceptional demeanor as a way of inoculating the Democratic ticket against this line of attack.

Let’s hope not. The VP matters, not only because he might be President, but because the role has grown into that of a significant policy advisor in recent administrations. Competence, achievement, experience and leadership, we hope, would rank higher as criteria than “doesn’t scare people.”

So if Kaine (who, as I can attest based on a few years of utterly undistinguished Kaine governance, does not posses great quantities of any of those important things) is the pick, it will tell us much about what is on Obama’s mind. It would also give us an exceptionally underwhelming running mate. Let’s hope that mediocrity is not what Obama is seeking, Noonan was just teasing, and Obama is concerned with finding someone who really can fill in the gaps in his own profile. It’s bad enough the top of the Democratic ticket is distinguished by a lack of accomplishment and experience. We hardly need a VP with the same deficits.