Can you stand some more commentary on how important the choice of a vice presidential running mate is?
The latest comes from the dean of American political science, Michael Barone, co-author of the biennially published Almanac of American Politics and a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report, who writes about why vice presidents are important.
Barone, ever the political historian, cites a book about the vice presidency, Not Exactly a Crime, which was published 36 years ago — ironically, the year before Spiro Agnew resigned the vice presidency because of crimes he committed while governor of Maryland.
"[A]s we await Barack Obama's and John McCain's choices for vice president, we do so with the knowledge that vice presidents in the last five administrations have been important officers of government," Barone writes.
There have been times — important times — in our nation's history when vice presidents were chosen for just about every other reason except their competence to be the national leader.
And, in some of those cases, the fates conspired to elevate those vice presidents to the Oval Office. The nation managed to survive the far-too-frequent Andrew Johnsons and Chester Arthurs who rose to the presidency that way — and it benefited from the occasional Theodore Roosevelt.
But as Barone points out, as recently as the mid-20th century, Harry Truman had been vice president for not quite three months, and he was so out of the loop that he didn't know that Franklin Roosevelt wasn't even in Washington when Truman was summoned to the White House to be informed of FDR's death in Georgia.
And Truman was left to make perhaps the most critical decision a president has had to make — whether to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.
It wasn't until 1977 that Jimmy Carter truly modernized the role of the vice president, giving Walter Mondale a wider range of responsibilities than merely presiding over the Senate. And every vice president in the last three decades (including, as Barone points out, Dan Quayle) has become better equipped to become president if that need should arise.
This has happened because all of Carter's successors have followed his example.
It's been a good thing for the country that the vice president has played a more active role, although the last vice president to ascend to the presidency through death or resignation did so prior to Carter's presidency — when the vice presidency still amounted to little more than presiding over the Senate (as Barone rightfully points out, a "clerk's job"), going on an occasional foreign junket and representing the country at foreign funerals.
Between 1841 and 1974, the vice president became president through the death or resignation of the duly elected president nine times. That's an average of one every 14.7 years.
It hasn't happened in 34 years.
That doesn't mean it will never happen again.
In fact, I believe the odds are good that the next vice president, whether he/she is a Republican or a Democrat, will become president.
People don't usually tend to vote for a president on the basis of whether they believe the running mate will actually turn out to be president in the next four years. But I believe it's a factor that voters should seriously consider in 2008.
At the age of 72, John McCain would be the oldest man to enter the presidency. It's far from certain that he would live to be 76.
And, as the first black president, Barack Obama — whether people want to talk about it or not — would be a tempting target for a racist would-be assassin. Even a heavy security detail cannot guarantee his absolute safety.
The point to remember is simply this. The selection of a running mate is an important decision for a presidential nominee. It's really the only presidential decision he will be asked to make during the campaign.
If the selection seems to be motivated by concerns over the impact it may have on voters in a certain state or region in the general election, that's a sign that the candidate is not making the choice with the nation's best interests at heart.
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