Friday, September 5, 2008

Thoughts on Vice

Vice Presidents, that is.

The sad truth that political pollsters and campaign managers know all too well, is that the average voter doesn't have time to sort out facts, positions or the other "boring" details that may most predict what an elected official does once elected.

Right now the focus of political junkies seems to be on Sarah Palin's lack of qualifications, and next on her not-too-hard to decipher political positions. Again the political junkies who support Democrats (many of them while trying to hold down lunch as they elect the lesser of two evils) seem to be forgetting the recent history of vice presidential nominees. Perhaps this is because Cheney, the current schmo, is an exception that seems to prove the rule.

What's worse that an empty suit or vacant (or would that be vacuous?) tailored suitdress as V.P.? Maybe it's a Vice President who is the Acting President.


Besides Cheney, what do we have by way of former V.P.s? Well, there is Daddy Bush, but again, he was something of an exception. Then we have Agnew, and Quayle. Each of them long-running punchlines that reassured the general public that the person in the office of vice president really didn't mean that much, all things considered.

Palin is very much cut in the cloth of the "punchline" Vice President. The problem being that with both Nixon and Bush Daddy, there was relatively little concern that the rigors of office would kill or incapacitate either candidate.

In the case of Nixon, I think many of us who remember him found it hard to imagine he would give up the post even if pronounced dead.

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