A better way to pick a VP
PRESIDENT CHENEY. If that possibility doesn't send a chill up your spine, how would you have felt about President Agnew or President Quayle?
The reason you may be feeling uncomfortable is quite simple. We never really elected those guys. We elected as president the guy who picked them as running mates because he calculated it would help him win the top job - not because they were necessarily ready to be president.
As a businessperson, I have always been fascinated with how Congress and the rest of the government are always telling businesses what to do - or not do. And, in the wake of
The irony, of course, is that these are only business CEO jobs. When it comes to who might inherit the "most powerful job on earth," the US presidency, we the public pay little attention how the "heartbeat away" job is decided. If a major corporation were as derelict as Congress has been in succession planning, some enterprising US attorney would seek indictments.
Billions of dollars will be spent by candidates seeking the 2008 presidency. And tens of billions of words will be used to scrutinize those candidates. But somehow the resources to vet the next vice president will be approximately equal to what former vice president John Nance Garner said the office was approximately worth, "a warm bucket of spit."
We have had 43 presidents. Nine of them ascended to the job without first being elected to it. So in any American's average lifetime, a couple of presidents inevitably will run the country without having to run the gantlet of primaries, debates, and intense public scrutiny.
Johnny Carson once said, "Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president." Just like business investors want tested and "grown-up" CEOs, we Americans are entitled to assurances that vice presidents are tested the same as presidential candidates.
The Constitution is vague regarding vice presidential selection. When this country was founded, the person who received the second most electoral votes for president became vice president. In the 1800 election, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each had 73 electoral votes. After 36 ballots in the House of Representatives, Jefferson became president and Burr his vice president.
After this fiasco, the 12th Amendment dictated separate ballots for president and vice president, and political parties played the dominant selection role. That changed in 1940 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused his party's nominee, Garner, and threatened not to run for reelection unless the Democrats let him decide on his running mate. He prevailed, and Henry Wallace became vice president. So much for the 12th Amendment. For a country founded on being democratic and antiroyal, we certainly have made our presidents potential "kingmakers."
If vice presidents were that good, that qualified, how come only five have ever been elected president in their own right?
So now we have this mess. It may be easily solved if Congress showed the courage and bravado it likes to exercise over business. And it should look for constitutional solutions to avoid political shenanigans.
Presidential nominees should be compelled to accept their running mates, not based on who might help them win the election, but on who the public feels can fill the presidency. For example:
Make the presidential nominee select his/her vice president from a list of the top three or five vote-getters in the presidential primaries.
Allow for vice presidential primaries.
Make the vice presidential election separate from the presidential one.
At least with these alternatives we would have had a long, hard look at these folks in advance. Americans deserve the opportunity to better influence who might be president.
In 2008, would it not be better to have the choices of tickets like Clinton-Obama, Obama-Edwards, Romney-McCain, Giuliani-Thompson, etc.? It sure beats some vice presidential nominee that no one has ever heard of or someone we hardly know.
I suspect if Cheney had had to actually go through such a thorough process, he would not be vice president.
And maybe then we would not be in Iraq, and maybe . . .
David D'Alessandro, a guest columnist, is the former CEO of 