By Nate Smith
February 22, 2008 07:14 pm
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Whatever you think about what happens in the presidential election this November, another parlor game that is going to be played is who will be the running mates vying to be (drum roll please...) Vice President.
The all-important role in Americana according to the U.S. Constitution has three requirements: Verify the results of the electoral college, be President of the Senate and stay alive in case the President is either sedated or dies.
But undisclosed locations aside, the veep is also there to help formulate the policy of any president. It has come a long way from John Adams, who said the VP job was “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
And Adams was the first vice president. A great way to start a new office. When Adams became President, he did not get along with his veep, Thomas Jefferson. That was when the first loser in the election became vice-president. It was not long after that the 12th Amendment was adopted, making separate ballots for the top two spots.
Without boring one with trivia of the deeds of veeps from the past or actually knowing who was Martin Van Buren’s VP, (Richard M. Johnson. I had to look it up on Wikipedia.), let’s move forward to present day. The present-day logic for choosing a running mate is to balance the ticket.
If your candidate is old, get someone young. You have a moderate candidate, get a hard-line party mate. This presidential election is different. You have candidates, John McCain for the GOP and Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democrats, that are dynamic as themselves.
In my opinion, any running mate this year would not balance the ticket. CNN brought this up during the California Democrat Debate and asked if there could be an Obama/Clinton or a Clinton/Obama ticket.
Why not? Why not take a person that wanted the top spot and fell short? Where is the logic of interviewing a person that didn’t run for the top spot in the first place?
You will understand after thinking about this question: What kid in school says, “When I grow up, I want to be vice-president”?
Does anyone know one? E-mail me because I want to talk to that kid.
I know I am belittling a former Hoosier VP, Dan Quayle, and one possible future Hoosier VP, Evan Bayh. But let’s look at the logic, starting with Obama and Clinton.
With the two together, you get the favorite of every voting bloc, labor, women, minorities, in the top spot or the number two. Will those fractured blocs be there in November? They could be disillusioned and not come out en masse on election day.
For McCain, you can get a conservative the hard-liners vote for, like a Mike Huckabee or a Mitt Romney, that has a proven track record. The kind of voters that didn’t vote for McCain in the primaries. The ones that he will need to win in November.
It doesn’t make any sense to me to pick someone who have may won a few statewide or district races but has not proven that a majority of people in a state have said, “We want this person to lead our country.”
Although many vice presidents do run for the top office later, only four (not counting 2000) have won after being vice-president. There are those who wait a while before running, like Richard Nixon, but in this age of instant media, will anyone have fond memories or even remember a former VP in four or eight years?
In many ways, this election is one of firsts. The first African-American President. The first female President. The first Republican President in over 20 years not named Bush. Why not buck the trend again and pick a running mate that people know?
Does history want another Richard M. Johnson?
nsmith@washtimesherald.com
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