RFK Jr. may have missed a major opportunity with his VP pick

One of the most anticipated stories in politics this week was the announcement of a running mate by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent candidate for president. Kennedy introduced Nicole Shanahan as the woman he would make his vice president. Shanahan, 38, is an attorney and high-tech Silicon Valley businesswoman.

Shanahan made an appealing debut as a speaker, long on sincerity and concern for issues of the environment and health. She expressed doubts about the overuse of vaccines, a rather mild version of Kennedy's own well-known antipathy to them. She said her running mate was "the only one anti-war candidate today" in the 2024 field.

Some other figures Kennedy had recently mentioned publicly as prospects – such as Aaron Rodgers and Jesse Ventura – might have added a household name and perhaps a note of notoriety. But Rodgers, a former Most Valuable Player in the NFL, and Jesse Ventura, a former pro wrestler who served a term as governor of Minnesota, both said the job had never been officially offered to them. A case could be made that Kennedy had mentioned these men simply to gain attention for the campaign.

The person Kennedy had chosen instead seemed to add little by way of stature or visibility for his bid. So most of the immediate comment focused on what she presumably can offer, which is money. Her former husband, Sergey Brin, is a co-founder of Google whose fortune has been estimated at more than $100 billion. The settlement she received when the couple divorced has not been disclosed but is presumably substantial.

And she will be permitted to spend as much of it on the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket as she wishes, because the Supreme Court has since 1976 treated personal spending for one's own candidacy to be