Dayton, Ohio: When Hillary Clinton was searching for a running mate, she made clear her top criterion: Her selection needed to be ready to become president “if something were to happen”, as she put it.
When she announced Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia as her choice, Clinton affirmed that he had passed that test.
Now, after Clinton had to be helped into a van while departing a September 11 anniversary ceremony on Sunday and the later disclosure that she had been given a pneumonia diagnosis on Friday, Kaine is coming under a more intense spotlight. When he took questions from reporters on Monday, all three major cable news channels carried the exchange live, a rare level of attention for his candidacy.
While everyone — politicians included — gets sick from time to time, the intense focus on Clinton’s health brings with it a constitutional reminder: Kaine is not only a campaign-trail booster, but also a possible president himself.
The scrutiny of Clinton’s health “means that Tim Kaine has to step up his game”, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.
“He’s such an unknown quantity to the American people that he now has to kind of assume the mantle of what it would be like to have him as commander in chief, not just vice president,” Brinkley said.
Nine vice-presidents have assumed the presidency during a president’s term, eight because of a death and one because of a resignation. In four of those eight instances, the president was assassinated. In four other cases, the president died of natural causes, most recently in 1945, when Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral haemorrhage and Harry S. Truman became president.
A lawyer by training, Kaine, who served as mayor of Richmond, Virginia, and as Virginia’s lieutenant governor and governor before winning election to the Senate in 2012, was seen as an appealing pick for Clinton in large part because of his resume and his policy chops.
But he is not a well-known figure nationally, even after more than seven weeks as Clinton’s running mate. In a CNN/ORC International poll conducted this month, 19 per cent of voters said they had never heard of Kaine, and an additional 21 per cent said they had no opinion of him.
“So far this has been a presidential race that has been heavily focused on the presidential candidates, to an unusual extent,” said Joel K. Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University who is an expert on the vice-presidency.
Recalling his own bout with pneumonia, Goldstein cautioned that “the fact that somebody has pneumonia doesn’t meant there’s about to be a succession”. But he said the episode on Sunday would bring more attention to Kaine’s suitability to the presidency.
“It should remind people of the importance of the two vice-presidential candidates, and whether they are appropriate presidential successors based on their experience, skill, character and substantive views,” he said.
As he hopscotches from state to state, Kaine comes across more as a genial travelling salesman for the Clinton-Kaine ticket than as a president in waiting. In his speeches, he tends to focus on making a case against Donald Trump while talking up Clinton.
At times, he still expresses shock that he is even on the Democratic ticket, as if he had been plucked from anonymity to embark upon a great adventure.
“I felt like I was Pinocchio turning into a real boy,” he told a crowd in Virginia on Friday, recalling when Clinton asked him to be her running mate. “I mean, like, ‘Wow, what? You want me? Are you kidding?’”
The biggest test of Kaine’s readiness will come on October 4, when he faces Trump’s running mate, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, in the vice-presidential debate.
“You don’t want a Sarah Palin situation where voters really have doubts about the second person on the ticket,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton. “It’s especially true if there are any kinds of concerns about age or health.”
Kaine, 58, differs from the man he is hoping to succeed, Vice-President Joe Biden, in that he is a relatively new member of the Senate, not an elder statesman. But Kaine has made a point of focusing on foreign policy during his time in the Senate, where he serves on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees.
Speaking to reporters after an event here on Monday, Kaine said he did not think the new episode involving Clinton’s health put any more pressure on him to convince voters he is ready to be president.
Even before the latest incident, Kaine had tried to defend Clinton against questions about her health, while also calling on Trump, who had accused Clinton of lacking stamina, to be more forthcoming about his own health.
Two weeks ago, Kaine mocked the letter from a doctor for Trump that asserted the candidate would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” while he also declared Clinton to be “one tough and one healthy person.”
And as he campaigned here on Monday, he offered fresh testimony about Clinton’s physical well-being.
“I’ve just been on the campaign since July 22,” Kaine told the crowd. “Hillary Clinton has been on the campaign trail for 18 months. Her energy staggers me. I have a hard time keeping up with her.”