y selecting former defense secretary Dick Cheney as his running mate, Governor George W. Bush yesterday filled out the Republican ticket - and rounded out the GOP's own profile as it heads toward the midsummer convention.
In every respect - in temperament, in background, in age, and outlook - the running mate complements the candidate. It is a classic matching of attributes. But in making the seemingly risk-free decision to select a respected and seasoned party elder, Bush may have taken the biggest risk of the campaign.
Where Bush is an outsider, Cheney is an insider. Where Bush is inexperienced, Cheney is tested. Where Bush is a blank page, Cheney is reams of agate type on the pages of the Congressional Record. Where Bush came of age politically in the 1990s, Cheney came of age in the 1970s. Where Bush leans to the middle, Cheney leans to the right.
They are, moreover, so compatible a team precisely because they are so different.
Bush is easy-going, Cheney is deliberative. Bush was unmarked by the tensions of his time, Cheney is branded by them. Bush is intuitive, Cheney is introspective.
The governor calculated that the addition of a battle-tested veteran of wars political, ideological, and military would complement the profile of a candidate whose experience in elected office is less than six years long. He sought, and found, a running mate who offered comfort to the candidate and presumably will do the same to the public.
For that reason, the selection of a onetime White House chief of staff, a member of the House Republican leadership, and civilian commander of the Pentagon was hailed by Republicans as the perfect match for the party and, they hope, for the country.
Cheney is, above all, steady. There will be no anxious moments in debates, no stumbles on the campaign trail, no gaffes in televised interviews. There will be no asides about ''Democrat wars,'' as Senator Robert J. Dole made as the GOP's 1976 vice-presidential nominee, no moments of terror to compare with the frightened look in Senator Dan Quayle's eyes during the 1988 debate with Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen of Texas.
But in the uncertainties of American politics in the new century, there is no assurance that a risk-free choice makes for a risk-free strategy.
In seeking to avoid the error his father made in selecting an unseasoned running mate, Bush may be suggesting that he is fighting the last campaign or, more specifically, the 1988 and 1992 campaigns. In seeking to install a mature figure at his side - the phrase that bounced around political circles in the wake of Cheney's selection was that the man from Wyoming was an ''adult'' - Bush may be risking the conclusion that the man who wants to lead the country himself is in need of a mentor.
At the same time, the selection of a running mate who is so experienced, so safe and so familiar runs the risk of undercutting the campaign's effort to position itself as an agent of excitement, experimentation, and change.
At the very least, however, Bush has hired a man who knows Washington, knows the government, knows the White House, knows the business world, and knows his own mind. The danger - and this the Bush campaign understands - is that Cheney's own mastery of all those areas may exceed the governor's.
That said, leadership is an intangible quality, resistant to definition. Bush will formally receive the Republican nomination next week because of a bundle of intangibles: his personality, his ability to set others at ease, his insight that the party would embrace a conservatism-in-a-velvet-glove, his impulse to reach out, not only to Democrats but also to the minorities and the striving who through much of the last century found the Republican Party inhospitable.
Cheney is a master of the levers of government. Bush is a master of the reflexes of the human spirit.
His choice of Cheney is the affirmation of one of the principles of Richard M. Nixon, who twice ran for vice president and four times selected a vice president. Nixon's maxim was simple: Be assured that your number two does no harm.
Cheney will do no harm. And it may not matter if he does no good.
This month the CBS News poll surveyed American adults and asked them whether they had ever changed their minds or voted for a different presidential candidate because of the identity of the vice-presidential contender. Only one in 11 said they had.
But the very process of selecting a vice president shapes more than a ticket. It shapes how a presidential candidate is viewed. Bush has made a choice, not about a running mate but about himself.
