BOB DOLE's choice of former star football quarterback, Jack Kemp, is almost as if Charlie Haughey had chosen Des O'Malley for Tanaiste.
Dole and Kemp are a very odd couple who have spent years deriding each other. But now they are supposed to rescue the Republican presidential ticket from the oblivion predicted by the polls.
Some see it as a brilliant strike and recall Jack Kennedy choosing Lyndon Johnson, whose politics he despised. Others see it as a sign of Dole's desperation. Yet there is no doubt that adding Kemp to the ticket has given the party the boost it badly needs as it faces into its convention.
Relations between the two have been prickly since both tried unsuccessfully to win the Republican nomination in 1988, but they reached a new low earlier this year when Dole practically begged Kemp to endorse him for the presidential nomination and was humiliatingly rebuffed. Kemp instead backed the multi millionaire, Steve Forbes.
Dole growled to his aides: "That's the last time we're dealing with the quarterback." Now four months later he has gone back to Kemp, the man who once said, "As a former quarterback, I refuse to accept second spot." (In American football, the quarterback is the key strategist, passer and runner for whom the other players clear the way to the line.)
Whether they will make a good team fascinates political observers. They have savaged each other over the years. Dole once quipped that Kemp, who sports a blow dry coiffure, "wants a business tax deduction for hair spray". Kemp riposted that "in a recent fire, Dole's library burned down. Both books were lost and he hadn't even finished colouring one of them yet."
As well as their personal antagonisms, the two men come from vastly different backgrounds and have been until now worlds apart on their economic philosophies. Dole's life has been one of struggle to escape Kansas poverty of the Depression era and to overcome crippling war wounds.
When their rivalry in the Reagan years was at its height, here is how Hedrick Smith, in The Power Game, made the comparison: "Kemp, by contrast, has the aura of a golden boy, born with a silver spoon. He exudes star quality, the electric energy of a former Super Bowl, pro football quarterback for the Buffalo Bills and the San Diego Chargers. His blow dried, brush backed sandy hair evokes the all American good looks of Jack Kennedy."
Today the hair is grey but Kemp still has the power to excite. He was once seen as a natural heir to Reagan, whose tax cutting supplyside economics he inspired. But he flopped badly in the 1988 primary campaign when George Bush came out on top.
Bush was expected to choose Kemp for a running mate to make a "dream ticket", but instead went for Dan Quayle. He gave Kemp the housing and urban development portfolio in his cabinet.
Kemp threw himself into the normally low profile job with enthusiasm, but his aggressive urban renewal plan and campaign to help minorities scared traditional Republicans. Bush was glad of Kemp's courageous stance when the 1992 Los Angeles riots drew attention to the neglect of the inner cities, but for the most part Kemp was sidelined.
Kemp became frustrated his outspoken criticism of colleagues made him enemies in the White House. His economic philosophy or "Kemponomics" is a blend of tax cuts to promote growth, and free enterprise projects instead of federal aid for minorities and the poor. As a congressman for a blue collar district in Buffalo, New York, he wanted to get away from the Republican's "country club" image.
His flat tax proposals drew scorn from Dole, who has always been a budget deficit "hawk" and saw the Kemp growth through tax cuts approach as only increasing the deficit.
Kemp, who also helped inspire Steve Forbes's proposal for a 17 per cent flat tax rate, will now have to tailor his radical ideas to Dole's more cautious approach to deficits.
Kemp (61), with his outgoing personality, is a more appealing figure. He married his college sweetheart, Joanne Main, and they have four grown up children. As a professional footballer, he set numerous records by the time he had retired and was almost a national hero.
He was born and grew up in California, where he once worked for Governor Reagan, but his political career has been as a New York congressman for 17 years, when he became known as a "bleeding heart conservative".
This compassionate side of Kemp is now seized on by the Republicans as an asset in attracting votes of minorities such as blacks and hispanics, who would normally vote Democrat, if at all. His reappearance on the political scene has stunned President Clinton and his aides, who assumed that Kemp was out of the running.
Kemp has certainly given the Dole campaign a badly needed boost and put the Democrats on alert that this might not be a push over. The pundits say people don't really vote for vice presidents. They might this time.