The importance of the Vice Presidency, 2008

One of FDR's Vice Presidents, John Nance Garner, likened the Vice Presidency to a warm bucket of spit. It's not always the one way ticket to oblivion it is for most of those who've held the office, though. John Adams and George H. W. Bush rode it into the White House in the next election. Millard Fillmore, John Tyler, Calvin Coolidge, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Johnson, and Lyndon Johnson (among others) rode their own Vice Presidencies straight to the White House without an intervening election. You never know what's going to happen.

But you can guess. Especially this time.

John McCain will be the oldest president ever inaugurated if he wins. The current holder of that title, Ronald Reagan, got through on a lot of sleep and a "hands off" attitude. One joke from the time went that Jimmy Carter proved anyone could be president and Ronald Reagan proved you didn't really need a president. John McCain isn't like that. He's hyper. He could drop dead or have a stroke any day, even during the campaign. It is unlikely that he could survive a four year term with two wars going on, a fractious country and Congress, and the mess that Bush has made of the world. John McCain's Vice President can't be impeachment insurance, the way Dan Quayle and Spiro Agnew were for George H. W. Bush or Richard Nixon respectively.

What about Obama? He's young, he's healthy, the contrast couldn't be clearer in terms of their likely ability to survive naturally for the next four or eight years. I'm not worried about his suddenly dropping dead in office as much as I am worried about his finding nothing to do after his presidency ends. And I'm even more worried, much more worried, about his not surviving because someone will assassinate him. Maybe I was just too traumatized by the assassinations of the 1960s, but it's always a possibility that any president will be assassinated, and an even greater possibility for the first black president of the United States. Obama's Vice Presidential running mate will be as serious and as important a choice as McCain's.