
 |
|
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Oct. 29, 2009
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our
Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
JWisdom.com Why what we wear
impacts who we are
With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love
With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks
With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really?
By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A
Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious
By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things
By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices
By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 15, 2009
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
May 23, 2008
/ 18 Iyar 5768
Standing by for the booby prize
By
Wesley Pruden
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Nobody has yet discovered what to do with the vice president. His only real duties are to attend funerals in far-off places abroad and to stand by for the only funeral he could enjoy. This isn't enough for an ambitious pol.
The first vice president was famously contemptuous of the office. "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived," John Adams said of it, and John Nance Garner, FDR's first vice president, echoed that with slightly more elegance, here sanitized: The office isn't worth "a pitcher of warm spit."
Nevertheless, when two governors, Charlie Crist of Florida and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, and one former governor, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, were invited to join John McCain for an audition and a barbecue at his ranch in Arizona this weekend, their bags were already packed, stuffed with extra socks and enough clean underwear to last the full three days.
The only other use for the office is to give pundits and hangers-on an opportunity to boldly speculate, wildly, as if they had the foggiest idea of what's going on in the heads of the nominees. It's harmless fun that only the credulous treat as if it means something.
"The politics of picking a vice president are constantly overstated," Richard Moe, who was Walter Mondale's chief of staff, told Al Hunt of Bloomberg News. "But the decision does tell us much about how that person will tend to govern and what his values are."
This doesn't explain why presidents have been so eager to discard their vice presidents once in office. Several modern presidents have not humiliated their vice presidents in public, and several modern vice presidents have even had useful things to do between foreign funerals. But usually not. Harry S. Truman, the third of FDR's vice presidents, rarely saw the president, even though FDR was seriously ill when Mr. Truman joined the ticket in the midst of war in 1944. When he became president in April the next year, he didn't even know the atomic bomb was in the works. He had to make the decision to drop it on Hiroshima four months later.
Presidential nominees try to balance the ticket, but balancing the ticket doesn't mean what it used to mean. Walter Mondale corrected sexual imbalance with Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, but the Democrats were doomed that year, anyway. Geography was once important, but Bill Clinton took a running mate from an adjoining state. Ronald Reagan chose George H.W. Bush for ideological balance, only to establish a brief dynasty. Barack Obama will almost certainly choose a white man, unless he challenges two precedents by taking a white woman. He could invite Hillary Clinton to join him in the expectation that she will refuse, but he has to be wary. She might not.
An Obama-Hillary ticket would be everybody's worst nightmare, beginning with the ritual photograph of the running mates and their spouses on stage on the final night at the national convention, where Jimmy Carter chased a reluctant and bemused Teddy Kennedy around the podium, begging like a puppy for his hand. The spectacle of Barack, Michelle, Hillary and Bill standing with arms upraised would frighten the millions, hardly the second occasion for Michelle Obama to feel pride in her country.
John F. Kennedy survived a presidential primary campaign in 1960 rougher and tougher than the one this year; we were a tougher country then, rarely needing a mommy, a lawyer or a grief counselor when someone said something rude to us. He invited Lyndon B. Johnson to join him in the full expectation that he would say no. But LBJ, who had barely survived a heart attack, weary of the Senate and looking for something enabling him to sleep late when he felt like it, said yes. JFK tried to rescind the invitation, but couldn't.
He was the rare running mate who actually made a difference. When he dispatched Lady Bird to make a whistle-stop tour through the Confederacy to reassure Southerners not eager to embrace a Massachusetts Yankee, she assured a Kennedy victory. In return, the new president effectively told him he didn't have to drop dead. Just get lost. John Adams wouldn't have been surprised.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
Wesley Pruden Archives
© 2007 Wesley Pruden
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|