The real race is for vice president

[Bravo Zulu]

The real race is for vice president
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Brian O'Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Warning to readers: It will be hard to care about the next president once you realize the vice president is key to everything.

I just got off the phone with Dan Coen, the head of vicepresidents.com, a man and a Web magazine consumed with "the people in the shadow, the second string, the runners up.'' From him, I learned that Bob Dole has been the key to the past three decades of American political history.

You think he's kidding?

Back in 1976, Mr. Dole was President Gerald Ford's running mate. Mr. Ford himself had been an unelected vice president, taking over when Spiro Agnew disgraced the office and split. At the time, Mr. Ford assured his wife, "Betty, don't worry, vice presidents don't do anything. I'll be there for a couple of years, then we'll go back home, retire ..."

Then President Richard Nixon resigned and coptered out of Washington, making Mr. Ford president. He chose Mr. Dole as his campaign sidekick, and Mr. Dole famously summed up the lure of the vice presidency this way: "It's inside work and there's no heavy lifting.''
The Ford/Dole ticket lost to Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. If Mr. Ford had won, Mr. Dole would have been the front-runner for the GOP nomination in 1980, and Ronald Reagan might never have gotten to the White House.

"No Reagan, no Bush, no Bush II,'' Mr. Coen explained. "It's six degrees of Bob Dole. He has changed the world over and over.''

Mr. Dole's role doesn't end there. He ran for president in 1996 and lost to President Bill Clinton. If Mr. Dole had won, he'd have been president in 2000 and there would have been no race between Al Gore and George W. Bush, no Florida recount, no worry about hanging chads or Supreme Court refs.

"It's all about Dole,'' says Mr. Coen.

It's an unusually open year. It's the first race since 1952 that has neither an incumbent president nor vice president seeking the presidential nomination, and the first time since 1976 that neither a Bush nor a Dole seeks the presidency or vice presidency. (That's assuming Jeb Bush or Elizabeth Dole isn't chosen as a vice presidential candidate. There always seems to be at least one handy.)
This Web magazine highlights the more obscure hopefuls, like U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., a distant relative of Aaron Burr, the only vice president before Dick Cheney to shoot someone while in office. (In 1804, Burr left Alexander Hamilton colder than a 10-dollar bill about where the Lincoln Tunnel exhaust fans are now in Weehawken, N.J. But I digress.)

It's tough to pick a favorite veep when choosing among 46 nondescript guys but, if pressed, Mr. Coen goes with Abraham Lincoln's first vice president, Hannibal Hamlin. Not only does Hamlin have "the greatest name in the world,'' he was a heartbeat away from the presidency during the Civil War "and nobody knows it.'' Hamlin was succeeded by Andrew Johnson for Lincoln's second term, so Johnson became president when Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

Douglas MacKinnon, who spent years working for Mr. Dole following the 1996 campaign, says the vice presidency is all about delivering a big swing state such as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania or Florida: "At a certain point they'll pick the brother of Satan if they think it will get them in the White House.".

The veep race doesn't really take off until March, Mr. Coen says. We'll just have to bide our time thinking about the presidential nominees until then


http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08010/848051-155.stm

[Tektonik]

1. If only viagra was available three decades ago...

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

2. I don't buy that the world would be better if two Dem-won races were won by Repubs. -nt