Will one of the most exciting primary election seasons ultimately end in sheer boredom? That was my immediate reaction today to hearing the news that Donald Trump is all but set on selecting Mike Pence as his running mate, and that Hillary Clinton's first choice might just be Tim Kaine. After I yawned widely, of course. Pence? Kaine? Really? These are the best two choices for vice president around? Wow.

Considering who else is on both candidates' short lists, these would be the most spectacularly mundane selections possible, for both Trump and Clinton. Perhaps that is the point, I will readily concede. Perhaps after all the excitement at the top of the ticket, some boredom will balance things out on both sides of the aisle. In Kaine's case, that isn't even a slur, but rather a self-evaluation -- he appeared on a Sunday morning political chatfest a few weeks back and described himself as "boring."

Of course this all comes with the usual caveat. The selection is not final for either candidate (at least not as of this writing -- confirmation may have happened while I've been typing), and although the Trump campaign is heavily leaking that Pence will be the choice, Trump himself might just be doing this to troll the media, once again -- he could easily change his mind later today and offer the slot to either of his other two top choices, Chris Christie or Newt Gingrich. It'd just be one more example of Trump being Trump, eagerly proving all the media talking heads wrong. All the Pence rumor-mongering might just be a feint, in other words.

I have to admit that I've thought all along that Newt Gingrich was going to get the nod. I thought this long before he was considered a top contender, in fact. Trump and Gingrich seemed perfectly compatible, at least personality-wise. The same case might also be made for Chris Christie -- who originally planned to be the loud-mouthed bully in the Republican presidential race, before Trump proved to be so much better at it than him. Christie has certainly done all he can to weasel his way into the running mate spot, appearing (zombie-like) behind Trump in public, whenever asked. But Christie doesn't add much political heft to the ticket. His experience has all been in New Jersey, and Trump was said to be looking for someone with experience with Congress, to help him pass his agenda (should he be elected). Gingrich isn't as shouty as Christie (for the most part), but he is just as entertaining. Newt loves getting under Democrats' skins, and he's actually got solid experience getting under the Clintons' skins as well. He's got oodles of congressional experience too.

The only problem with Trump naming either Christie or Gingrich as his running mate is he would risk occasionally being overshadowed by them. Both men have a proven ability to say outrageous things of their own, and this might lead to them getting out in front of Trump on a particular issue. It would certainly be a change seeing Trump get asked what he thought about someone else's outrageousness, that's for sure, but you could easily see how this might annoy Trump. But Christie or Gingrich certainly would fill the "attack dog" role traditionally expected of the running mate, as neither one has ever shirked from sparring with anyone who disagrees with them.

But because Christie or Gingrich would make so much sense as Trump's running mate, it's pretty jarring to hear that he's apparently going with a much safer choice instead. Mike Pence hails from the conservative and religious wings of the Republican Party, and is acceptable to a wide spectrum of Republicans, from the Koch brothers to establishment Republicans to evangelicals to Tea Partiers. He is definitely the "safe choice" among those on Trump's shortlist. He is also not known for wild bombast, meaning he'll likely never overshadow Trump on the campaign trail. Pence would also avoid a very tough re-election race that he may well lose (in his own state, Indiana). So he's got to be overjoyed to be Trump's pick (something that a lot of Republicans quite obviously wouldn't be, this year).

Pence would obviously gain Trump some acceptance from wings of the party that have so far been reluctant (at best) to support him. It would calm a lot of big Republican donors, to put this another way. Trump would be seen as -- for the first time in the entire election season -- playing things safe and accepting a fairly establishment candidate as his running mate. When else has the phrase "playing it safe" been used about anything Trump has so far said and done, after all? Still, as a political observer, I have to say that Pence is about as boring a selection as could be imagined from a character like Donald Trump, so it's disappointing to me personally (I would point out, though, that I'm not exactly the target audience for being excited about a Republican veep pick).

If Trump picks Pence, that might open the door even wider for Hillary Clinton to choose Tim Kaine as her running mate. Clinton has plenty of other candidates to choose from, some of them quite exciting, but the Clintons have always been known for playing things fairly safe politically. In other words, Clinton picking Kaine isn't anywhere near as shocking as Trump picking Pence.

Hillary has even more to worry about when it comes to being overshadowed by a more-rousing running mate. Picking a firebrand like Elizabeth Warren would certainly excite a lot of Democratic voters, but that in and of itself is a problem for Clinton. She would continually face snarky questions from the press about why her running mate was so much more popular with the crowds than Hillary could manage. John McCain is the best recent example of how this can hurt the candidate at the top of the ticket, since Sarah Palin was so much more exciting on the campaign trail than McCain ever was. Warren isn't even the only one on Clinton's shortlist who might wind up overshadowing Hillary's own campaign.

Kaine is the safe choice all around. He's currently in the Senate, but in a seat from a state with a Democratic governor (who has close ties to the Clintons, coincidentally). This means he could safely be replaced by a Democrat, should Clinton win. Clinton might even get to have an influence on who gets picked to replace Kaine in the Senate. Kaine is from Virginia, which is increasingly becoming a Democratic state (the population is demographically moving to the blue column), but is still considered a swing state in presidential elections. Obama won the state twice, but before that it had reliably voted Republican in presidential years. Bill Clinton never managed to win Virginia, for instance, even though he did win other Southern states.

Of course, there's one obvious way Kaine is about as conventional a choice as could be imagined: he's a white guy. Now, with a woman at the top of the ticket, many have cautioned that picking another woman (Warren, for example) would be too much for some voters to deal with. Gender aside, though, Kaine isn't exactly anybody's idea of a diversity candidate. He is fluent in Spanish, but he's not a Latino -- when there are multiple impressive Latinos on Hillary's shortlist. America has had a black president for eight years, but it certainly would be inspiring to see the first Latino named to a national ticket for millions of voters. Kaine being interviewed on Spanish-language television isn't quite the same thing.

Kaine is a fairly safe choice ideologically as well. He's not exactly known as a firebrand (he laughingly describes himself as "boring," please remember), so he'd never be in danger of overshadowing Clinton in any way. And if Trump is going the boring route, it would be easy for Clinton to also choose to walk the same path.

Even so, who could have predicted that the veep choices would be such a snooze-fest? In a year where Trump blew away all records for outrageousness on the campaign trail and Hillary Clinton fought a very hard fight against an aging Democratic Socialist who excited millions of young people, who would have thought that we'd all be yawning into our hands over their running mates? Mike Pence? Tim Kaine? Who? Really? Wow. Excuse me... (big yawn)... I think I need to take a nap or something....

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant