Posted by Jed Lewison on Thu Aug 7, 2008 at 5:37 PM Pacific

Veepstakes: Float like a butterfly, sting like a 'B' (as in Brown)?

Everything I've heard (which comes exclusively from reporters) is that Barack Obama mill be choosing one of the following four potential VPs to be his running mate: Hillary Clinton, Evan Bayh, Tim Kaine, or Joe Biden.

Each of those candidates has pluses and minuses, and it's hard to argue against the CW that one of them will end up joining Obama on the ticket -- especially since the CW is based on actual reporting from sources close to the campaign.

Still, something just doesn't seem right to me about about the CW. The Obama campaign is not one that is prone to leaks, and I don't understand why they would leak the name of the VP well ahead of his or her eventual selection. On the other hand, I do understand why they would float names that they didn't plan on selecting.

For Bayh, it's to generate interest in local Indiana press; for Kaine, it's to help a longtime supporter gain some national exposure and to highlight Obama's commitment to Virginia; for Clinton, it's to help maintain party unity; and for Biden, it's to show respect to a man who could be a very important surrogate for Obama on foreign policy.

Now if those names are just being floated, who might Barack Obama ultimately pick? Well, at the risk of suggesting a name that may make me sound foolish in a few weeks time, consider the possibility that Obama will select Sherrod Brown, the Democratic senator from Ohio.

Here's some of what Brown could bring to the ticket: he's a populist's populist; he's a good politician (in 2006, he defeated an incumbent Republican senator in the most important swing state, winning 56% of the vote); he voted against the Iraq war; and perhaps most importantly, he's very smart.

If you're curious whether or not Brown would be a good running mate, consider the headlines he's generated in the past day or so:

There's no indication that he's campaigning for the job, but if he were, those headlines wouldn't be a bad way of going about it.