Presidential candidates will be checking potential running mates' track records

The election may not hinge on it, but there are plenty of chances for career advancement.

That's why some heavy political hitters are waiting for the phone to ring as Al Gore and George W. Bush quietly go about the job of picking a running mate.

Analysts expect the suspense to build until the party conventions this summer - buying time for aides and enemies to find skeletons and letting names linger to satisfy one constituency or another.

"There's really no incentive for either one of them to decide in a hurry, and there's a strong incentive to gather as much information about candidates as they can," said Dr. Michael Nelson, a professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., who has written extensively about the vice presidency.

The primary's two also-rans, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, have ruled out accepting the job - not that anyone has offered.

Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush are mum on their choices of running mates - but dozens of names have been floated.

On the Democratic side, that includes Sen. Bob Graham of Florida and Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, both former governors, and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.

Republicans dream of drafting retired Gen. Colin Powell, President George Bush's chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But he has ruled himself out.

Others favor former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, a Bush adviser who is chairman of Halliburton Co., the Dallas-based oil-.business giant. Or Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar, a foreign-policy expert. Or Elizabeth Dole, the former Red Cross president and former presidential candidate.

Balancing act

Throughout the nation's history, presidential nominees have sought running mates to compensate for their own weaknesses.

Small-state governors pick big-state senators. Conservatives pick moderates. Northerners look to the South, Midwest or West.

Candidates also look for people who can step into the top job. Fourteen vice presidents, including five since World War II, have become president.

Like Mr. Gore, Mr. Bayh of Indiana is the son of a senator, and he could help in the Midwest. Mr. Graham is a potential counterweight in Florida to Mr. Bush's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, though that strategy makes little sense to some analysts.

Mr. Richardson is Hispanic, a member of the fastest-growing ethnic group in America, particularly in California, Florida and Texas.

Other Democratic contenders include Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, a key battleground state; Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California; and North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, whose education record could offset Mr. Bush's.

Playing the odds

Few expect Mr. Gore to tap Mr. Bradley, who didn't win a single primary.

On the Republican side, Mr. Bush has more of a problem, experts say. He lacks foreign-policy experience and might do well to pick someone fresh from Capitol Hill.

Many McCain backers are still pushing the Arizona senator.

"Everybody who watches politics knows that Bush-McCain would be our strongest ticket," said U.S. Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a McCain supporter.

Some Republicans wonder whether Mr. Bush can get by with some other war hero/campaign reformer or whether he'll have to swallow some pride and lure Mr. McCain onto the ticket. One McCain "look-alike" is Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who saved his own brother from a burning armored vehicle in Vietnam.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, another Vietnam War veteran and a 20-year Bush family friend, is a leading contender. He runs a big industrial state and spent 12 years in Congress.

And he's Catholic, which could inoculate Mr. Bush against continued attacks stemming from his visit to Bob Jones University in South Carolina.

Mr. Ridge also supports abortion rights, which might risk antagonizing social conservatives, some analysts say. So does New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman, who has a tax-cutting reputation but has become a lightning rod for religious conservatives.

'Do no harm'

In most years, both parties would look to California, the "big enchilada" of electoral votes.

But Dr. George Edwards, director of the center for presidential studies at Texas A&M University, sees no point in either side doing so, because Democrats have the state nearly locked up - just as Republicans own Texas, where Bush brothers govern.

In picking a running mate, he said, "The first rule, really, is do no harm."

Given the luxury of time, both candidates can keep their options open.

If gasoline hits $2 a gallon by the conventions, the bottom drops out of the Dow and unemployment and inflation rise, Mr. Gore might try for former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Now a director at Citigroup, he probably would be the wealthiest man ever on a major-.party ticket.

If either candidate is lagging badly by the time the primaries roll around - Republicans meet on July 31 in Philadelphia, Democrats two weeks later in Los Angeles - he might try something "bold and path-breaking," said Dr. Nelson of Memphis.

The Clinton-Gore ticket of 1992 proved that geographic balance was no longer vital.

The candidates came from neighboring Southern states, shared a New Democrat ideology, were close in age and worshiped as Southern Baptists.

"It was a completely nontraditional choice," Dr. Nelson said. "But Gore balanced the ticket in some very subtle ways. He's a veteran, and Clinton was not. He was someone with a reputation as a strong family man, and Clinton was not. . . . What it showed was, you can balance the ticket in ways that nobody's thought of before."