The Veepstakes

One of the most deep and profound political questions in a political year like this one is, “What’s next?” After an amazing marathon, Democrats have finally settled the question regarding three a.m. phone calls. The answer is change we can believe in and from that political axiom, a whole philosophy of new ideas can be inferred, most of which are actually 2008 versions of hackneyed, recycled political Leftism.

For the next six months, Barak Obama will be trying to convince me and millions of others of why I should not vote for John McCain. For the next six months, John McCain will, I fear, be trying to convince me and millions of others of why I should not vote for John McCain. Obama and McCain have a tough job ahead, for I plan to vote for McCain and then begin on the day after the November election working to reconstruct a conservative and Christian voice in American politics. On the other hand, I might focus on reading lots more poetry. Poetic imagination does, after all, contain more promise for the society and the future than does political action. Culture trumps politics, as my friend Andrew Sandlin often reminds us.

Again, the question is, “What’s next?” The answer is that the next big news story will be the candidates’ choices of their running mates. It seems safe to say that people vote for Presidents and not for Vice Presidents. The bottom half of the ticket cannot win the election, but it can lose the election. The Veep candidate is like the ice chest full of sandwiches and cold drinks thrown in the canoe at the beginning of a day-long run over the rapids. The ice chest does not define the trip, but its absence can ruin the day.

The thing that frightens me in this election year is a certain Republican tendency. There is so much I love, appreciate, and defend in regard to the Republican Party. I am a Reagan Republican, but the party has some unusual quirks, such as the ability to abandon Reaganism in honor of Reagan. Or the ability to run absolutely inept national campaigns or the ability to become doormats to Democrat policies.

The quirky, often destructive, Republican tendency I fear is the Republican Presidential candidates’ tendency to pick inept, weak, or flawed running mates. Quite frankly, Democrats are far more creative than Republican at picking the person for position number two.

Republicans

Looking at the history, we notice that in 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976,1992, and 1996, Republicans blundered in their choices of Vice Presidential candidates. Let us remember fondly the names of those stellar statesmen: Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., William Miller, Spiro T. Agnew, Robert Dole, Dan Quayle, and Jack Kemp.

Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. was Richard Nixon’s running mate in 1960. With a distinguished name and family history, he was part of the Republican east coast establishment and had served in a number of important political roles. At a later time—after the 1960 election—he was ambassador to Vietnam when the war there escalated. Perhaps Nixon chose him because he had already suffered a defeat running against John Kennedy for the Senate in Massachusetts. Experience in defeat can be useful for Republican candidates. During the 1960 campaign, Lodge took lots of naps, leisurely assured rich Republicans that their country clubs could remain all Protestant, and basically made no waves. He did not cause Nixon to lose that squeaker of an election, and perhaps, short of lending Nixon a razor and some shaving cream prior to the television debate, he probably could have done little to change the outcome.

Four years later, the Republicans had an uncharacteristically wild and unpredictable nomination process. Something happened far more shocking than the nomination of a black man or a woman, for they nominated a bona fide, true conservative, Barry Goldwater. All it took to get the nomination for Goldwater was dividing and fracturing the party. Goldwater then picked Congressman William Miller of New York as his running mate. This likely helped unify at least a part of the party, for Miller most likely voted for Goldwater as a result. (I think he got some votes in New York.) Goldwater reasoned that Miller would really get under Lyndon Johnson’s skin. Miller would have really irked Johnson, except that before the 1964 election campaign, LBJ had never heard of Miller and after the campaign, still had never heard of him. When he appeared years later on a credit card advertisement, he introduced himself saying, “Do you know me?” Of course, no one did, except possibly Barry Goldwater.

In 1968, Richard Nixon proved his political genius by his political rehabilitation and his use of an electric razor. After a tough fight, he clinched the Republican nomination and then chose his running mate. His choice illustrated Nixon’s incredible capacity to try to coalesce varying factions into thinking he was one of them and his incredible capacity to make bad decisions. He chose Maryland’s Governor Spiro T. Agnew to run with him. Agnew had political ties with New York political power and Nixon rival Nelson Rockefeller. And Nixon assumed that Agnew's record as a conservative governor of a Southern (Maryland ?) state would fulfill his Southern strategic goals. In typical Nixonian fashion, he kept him on the ticket four years later. After all, Nixon only despised Agnew for his incompetence, laziness, lack of political skills, and mental dullness. On the golf course, Agnew was quite agile, however.

The Republican Party was in disarray in 1976. Both Nixon and Agnew had resigned from office under the shadow of scandals. The Vietnam War was lost at the negotiating tables and on the ground. Inflation was raging and oil products were running short. Gerald Ford, the first appointed Vice President, was elevated to the Oval Office at a miserable point in history, but he provided a time of decency and calm after the Nixon administration’s meltdown. Ford appointed Nelson Rockefeller, the leader of the liberal wing of the Republican Party, to be his Vice President. Due to pressures from the conservative wing of the party, Rockefeller announced he would not be Ford’s running mate in 1976. Soon after than, Ronald Reagan announced that Ford would not need a running mate in 1976.

After a bruising nomination process, Ford capitalized on his incumbency to beat Reagan for the nomination. Ford then chose Kansas Senator Robert Dole to be his running mate. This really made good sense—to Ford. After all, Kansas was a Republican state with a small number of electoral votes, and Dole’s presence on the ticket probably added a percentage or two to the Republican margin of victory there. In the year of the outsider, Ford probably assumed that since Dole was a Senator, he was a Washington outsider.

Twenty years later, Dole himself was the Republican nominee and he chose former football quarterback, congressman, and cabinet member Jack Kemp to be his running mate. In his day, Kemp came across as forceful, well grounded on economic issues, and dull. In his political prime, particularly in 1988, he, either as a Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate, potentially could have carried the Reagan banner to victory. By 1996, he potentially could have carried water for a football team. Bottom line is that he appeared lackluster when compared with Sen. Dole and even appeared lackluster when debating then Vice President Albert Gore.

But Jack Kemp, even in his more boring raspy recitations of economic figures, stood head and shoulders above Dan Quayle. In 1988, George H.W. Bush, upon arriving at the Republican Convention, announced his choice of Sen. Quayle of Indiana as his running mate. Eight years of Ronald Reagan had the economy booming and the Soviets quaking. Bush, now ill fittingly clad with Reagan’s mantle, envisioned that Quayle’s intelligence, looks, communication skills, and youthfulness would attract attention to a party dominated by old men. He was right about Quayle’s youthfulness. After four years of the politically adolescent Quayle, Bush missed the opportunity to drop him from the ticket, and side by side, they went down to defeat.

Two Republican Presidents showed insight and skill in picking Vice Presidential candidates. In 1980, Ronald Reagan briefly considered the idea of asking former President Gerald Ford to take the nomination for the second position. Reagan was more ideologically bound than any other U.S. President since Grover Cleveland. But outside of ideology, Reagan had an incredible ability to think through creative options, so he briefly considered having a Vice President who had actually been a President.

Ford would have brought too much baggage (some of it named Henry Kissinger) and too many demands to the office, so Reagan nixed the idea. Instead, Reagan chose his chief rival for the nomination, George H. W. Bush. Many conservatives have criticized those who from within the then-future Reagan administration undermined the Reagan Conservative Vision. Bush heads the line-up of usual suspects. Maybe Reagan could have won in 1980 without Bush, and without the Republican establishment, and without the party regulars. Up until nearly election day in 1980, victory was in doubt. Reagan needed the party regulars to join with the conservative insurgents. Reagan did not want to be Goldwater II. As was so often the case, Reagan was right.

In 2000, George W. Bush made his first executive decision as a Presidential candidate. He chose Richard Cheney to be his second man. Cheney added gravity, experience, political saavy, strategic brilliance, and solidity to a ticket that appeared a bit light at the top. Cheney bested Joe Lieberman in the 2000 Vice Presidential debate and then mauled the well-groomed John Edwards in 2004. It was to Bush’s credit that he chose a man so weighted with strengths that differed from those of Bush.

To tally the Republican score on picking Veeps: Eight losses and four wins.

Democrats

Without detailing the Democrat’s choices in as much detail, it can be said that the Democrats had nine good choices and three unsuccessful ones. Kennedy’s choice of his chief rival, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1960 was brilliant. Kennedy and Johnson’s loathing of each other was exceeded only by their success as a political team.

Johnson chose brilliantly when he put Hubert Humphrey on his ticket in 1964. Humphrey represented the liberal and activist wing of the party, and he was an unstoppable campaigner. In 1968, the Democrat Party was in a disastrous strait, with the Vietnam War abroad and civil unrest at home. Humphrey wanted Teddy Kennedy, brother to the two slain Democrat heroes, on his ticket. In 1968, Kennedy did not yet have the baggage of Chappaquiddick, but he was not interested in running. Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine joined the ticket and proved to be an effective candidate.

Short of granting 270 electoral votes to Massachusetts, there was no way for George McGovern to win the presidency in 1972. He too wanted Kennedy on the ticket. Instead, for a short time, Thomas Eagleton was on McGovern’s ticket, but a record of psychiatric treatments, which should have been required of any running mate with McGovern, caused him to leave the ticket. McGovern replaced him with a member of the Kennedy family, Sergeant Shriver. This likable former commander of the Peace Corp would have to wait over thirty years before he could celebrate a political victory, and that was when his son-in-law, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was elected Governor of California.

Jimmy Carter’s choice of Walter Mondale and Bill Clinton’s choice of Albert Gore both proved advantageous. It is hard to believe it now, but in their prime, both Mondale and Gore were powerful, attention-drawing candidates. Gore himself chose wisely when he put Joe Lieberman on his ticket in 2000. Lieberman, more than any other Senator, had castigated Gore’s boss, Bill Clinton, for his shameful behavior as President. 1988, Michael Dukakis chose Texas Senator Lloyd Bentson to be his running mate, and had he then reversed the ticket, they might have won.

Walter Mondale put the first woman, Geraldine Ferraro, on a national ticket in 1984. The only chance the Democrats had that year was if they had nominated Republican Ronald Reagan who was running for re-election. The choice of Ferraro brought some excitement to the ticket, but it left Democrats thinking that they still needed a man on the ticket somewhere. In 2004, John Kerry chose the primped and well-coiffured trial lawyer and former rival John Edwards as his running mate. For a man renown for his skill at picking rich women to marry, Kerry’s ability to pick a running mate was similar to his tendency to botch jokes.

Why?

The thing that I fear for this election year is that John McCain will pick someone whose rhetorical skills, moderate political views, and energy fall short of his own. Due to the recent demise of the late Senator Strom Thurman, I think I can assume McCain will pick someone younger than himself as a running mate. I cannot be sure of much else.

Why are Republicans so short-sighted and Democrats so politically apt at making the decision on how to balance the ticket? I think perhaps it is because Democrats have an unusual foundation for all political thought: Win elections. Republicans act as though they are filling board positions. Republicans think hierarchy; Democrats think votes. Democrats hearken back to the Franklin Roosevelt coalition; Republicans fear having a Theodore Roosevelt on the ticket.

Democrats think of attracting votes and Republicans think of resumes. Yes, resumes. That leads to another topic and another time.