WASHINGTON — In the market of speculation on prospective running mates, Sen. Jack Reed’s stock has risen since his travels at the side of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq.

But there is a strong rebuttal to the case that pundits make for Reed’s potential to be a good candidate for vice president. The man says he does not want to change jobs.

“I am interested in serving in the United States Senate and that interest trumps any consideration of serving as a vice president,” Rhode Island Democrat Reed said last week.

Reed was asked in an interview Friday afternoon: “If you were offered this position you would decline, is that correct?”

“Yeah,” he answered, “but frankly I don’t expect to be offered the position.” Reed added, “I want to continue to be a legislator.” Reed said, further, that he has not been asked by the Obama campaign to answer questionnaires, put investigators in touch with accountants, or take other such steps necessary for checking the background of a vice-presidential prospect. That fact, Reed said, makes his point that a slot on Obama’s ticket “is not an offer that I will have to refuse.”

Reed, a comparatively little-known senator outside Washington, is widely known inside the Capitol as an experienced hand on defense and foreign policy issues. He went to West Point, served as an officer in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and is a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. On that basis, some pundits speculated early in this year’s Democratic nominating contest that Reed might be a good running mate for Illinois Democrat Obama, should he win the party’s nomination.

But Reed issued an almost Shermanesque declaration of non-interest in the vice presidency in February. “I have no intention to seek it,” he said of the second position on a Democratic ticket, “or even, if offered it, to accept.”

Asked Friday whether he stands by that statement now, Reed said, “I’m exactly where I was six months ago and probably a year — long before it was obvious that Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee.”

But that was also before Obama — a first-term senator without much foreign policy experience — drafted Reed and another Army veteran, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., to accompany him on a tour of Afghanistan and Iraq. The three traveled together from Thursday, July 17, until last Tuesday, appearing finally at a dramatically-staged news conference on a hilltop in Jordan that got worldwide attention.

Also the topic of avid attention, suddenly, was Reed’s potential to add foreign policy luster to an Obama ticket. The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald F. Seib, for example, wrote in a column published Tuesday, “If you were to construct the ideal Democrat to engage Republicans in debate over Iraq, he might look something like” Reed.

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in an e-mail that the consideration of prospective running mates “is a process that we are just not commenting on.”

Campaign analysts and politicians seasoned in presidential campaigns engaged in similar musings about Reed in interviews last week, but they generally made a disclaimer along these lines: nobody except the candidate and a few intimates really knows who is under consideration to be the Democratic candidate for vice president.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988, said an essential element of selection of a running mate is that the process is confidential and closely held and overseen by a trusted associate of the nominee. Outside speculation is no more than that, he said.

“I made a lot of mistakes, but I think one of the things I did right” was choosing Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen as a running mate, using a process that cast a wide net but efficiently winnowed the prospects down to four — that included Sen. John Glenn, Sen. Al Gore and Rep. Dick Gephardt. “It’s kind of hard to describe” how the final choice proceeds from there, he said, because it involves a large element of personal chemistry, along with the weighing of a huge amount of information amassed on each prospect.

“The absolute, overriding factor” in the choice has to be that the running mate is equipped to be president, Dukakis said. “All the other stuff is nonsense,” he said. “Jack Reed meets that test. I don’t think there’s any question about it.”

Dukakis said, “It says a lot about Obama” that he chose such experienced defense policy hands as Reed and Sen. Chuck Hagel to accompany him to Iraq and Afghanistan. Dukakis added, however, “One problem with Jack — which has got nothing to do with his qualifications — is that you’ve got a Republican governor,” who would appoint a Republican senator if Reed left office to become vice president — a potential problem for a Democratic president working with a Senate that might have a narrow Democratic majority.

Reed is “very impressive,” according to former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, who served under President Jimmy Carter and was himself the Democratic nominee for president 24 years ago. “I’ve watched his career and he is very strong in that national affairs arena, and I think that is why Obama wanted him” on the five-day journey from Washington to Afghanistan and Iraq, Mondale said.

Mondale said he could imagine Reed “performing very strongly in debates and reassuring the public that an Obama presidency would keep them safe.”

Mondale cautioned that some prospective ticket mates do remove themselves from consideration. “If that’s what he says” to Obama, “then that’s what he means,” Mondale said. “On the other hand, if the presidential nominee asks you to consider running with him, well, I think [Reed] would be forgiven for reconsidering.”

Several independent campaign analysts said speculation about Reed as a running mate was inevitable when it became clear how valuable he was as a traveling adviser to Obama on a trip plainly designed to burnish the first-term Illinois senator’s foreign policy credentials.

“People are uneasy about Obama. Swing voters are uneasy about Obama. They wonder whether he is up to the job, whether he has the experience to make these critical decisions,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. Reed is among several who could help the ticket in that regard, he said.

Charles Cook, of the Washington-based Cook Political Report, said Obama’s situation is “a little bit like Ronald Reagan’s in 1980 and a little bit like George W. Bush’s in 2000” because his generally strong appeal is somewhat undercut by his inexperience in defense and foreign affairs.

“Reed is a very bright, very knowledgeable, very experienced guy, but I don’t think that would get him on the ticket,” Cook said. “West Point and the 82nd Airborne could,” he said.

Cook and another independent analyst, Stuart Rothenberg, both said Reed has another asset — he would not put the Obama campaign in a state of worry about whether he would commit a gaffe or overshadow the presidential candidate.

Rothenberg added that traditional geographic ticket-balancing concerns are not as important as they once were. But Sabato said it is still useful for vice presidential candidates to carry at least the prospect of adding to the ticket’s tally of electoral votes — highly unlikely in Reed’s case, since Obama seems a very good bet to take Rhode Island.

In the interview Friday, Reed said he has tried to be “so consistently clear” about his intention to run for reelection this year and serve another Senate term that “I don’t think I would be in consideration” for a place on the ticket.

Asked whether he discussed the topic of the national ticket with Obama or those close to him, Reed said, “I’ve tried to make everyone aware of my interest to serve in the Senate.”

Did he tell that directly to Obama?

“I’ve told everybody directly. It’s not exclusive to Senator Obama or anyone else,” Reed replied. “This is consistent. This is not changing. This is a decision I made years ago basically.”

Reed added that he thinks he could best help an Obama administration “here in the United States Senate.”

Mondale seconded that thought. “In some ways, he can be more helpful from the Senate because he’s established there, everybody knows him, he’s got an established background,” Mondale said. “He’d be an asset in the Senate to any president.”

jmulligan@belo-dc.com