So someone pointed out that in the last 50 years, the list of GOP Veep picks (not counting Ford, who had to jump in after Agnew was indicted) reads as follows:
Paul Ryan
Sarah Palin
Dick Cheney
Jack Kemp
Dan Quayle
George H. W. Bush
Bob Dole
Spiro Agnew
William E. Miller
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
Richard Nixon
Of that list, Miller is a cipher and maybe Dole and Lodge are respectable? Point being that expecting the Republicans to actually make a good VP choice is probably a bit much.
Cheney was the most powerful and influential VP in the history of the office. He wasn't well-liked, probably didn't win Bush any votes, and should be tried at the Hague, but he doesn't really belong to the same category of VP picks as Palin and Quayle.
Bush Sr -- well, I've said before that he doesn't seem so bad in hindsight.
Kemp -- I DO think it says something that he's remembered more for football than any of his actual policy opinions. He was a pretty standard veep pick; a bland 1990's-era Republican like Dole himself.
Joe Biden, John Edwards, Joseph Lieberman, Al Gore...
Lloyd Bentsen, Geraldine Ferraro, Walter Mondale, Thomas Eagleton/Sargent Shriver, Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, LBJ, Estes Kefauver.
(Including Humphrey even though we didn't include Rockefeller because Rockefeller assumed office before Ford's 1976 campaign, while Humphrey did not assume office until after LBJ was elected to his second term.)
Course, a good big swath of the '70's and '80's is "Democrats lost in the wilderness" territory, but trying to take them on their own merits:
Dukakis picked Bentsen for the same reason Kennedy picked Johnson: he was a Texas conservative who had started to shift more toward the left, and could conceivably have helped him tick off a lot of demographic boxes. It was a perfectly sound strategy; Bentsen isn't the guy who cost Dukakis the election.
Ferraro: She's a lot smarter and more competent than Palin, but was subject to a lot of the same doubts -- foreign policy inexperience, girls have cooties, etc. On the whole I think she was probably a good pick who helped bring some interest to the campaign; it wasn't her fault Mondale got spanked.
Mondale himself: Actually a pretty big deal; he was the guy who started expanding the role of the VP's office. There's a straight line from him to Bush to Gore to Cheney.
Shriver: Shriver was a legitimately great man and a good pick for a running-mate.
Unfortunately he was taking over for Eagleton, in one of the all-time great campaign-season crises. McGovern was already sunk by the time Shriver came onboard.
Muskie: A popular Senator who had appeal in the Deep South where other Democrats were foundering, and certainly a much more appealing running-mate than Agnew. Another case where the VP choice was sound but the ticket still lost.
Humphrey: Something of an interesting case considering Zara's comment about the primaries. Kennedy defeated him and didn't pick him as a running-mate, but then Johnson picked him as a running-mate. Seems like he was a popular enough guy, and, more importantly, he's an example of Johnson bringing in someone who was willing to argue with him on issues like Vietnam.
Johnson: One of the most important VP picks in history. Sometimes the running-mate choice matters and sometimes it doesn't; LBJ mattered. Kennedy couldn't have won without him. As President he wound up being a mixed bag (yay civil rights, boo Vietnam), but on the whole he made for a very shrewd choice on Kennedy's part.
Kefauver: He was popular in his day, known for supporting the New Deal and fighting organized crime. (He was also one of the key figures in the Senate hearings on comic books; I am not a fan of that.) He's another one who was a pretty good pick and was not at fault for the ticket's defeat.
Getting back to the modern ones: Gore and Biden are easily mocked but I don't think either one's a bad veep. I think they both fit pretty well into the modern idea of what a VP is supposed to be; somewhere south of Cheney's power but still an active part of the Administration. Gore's known as boring and Biden's known for putting his foot in his mouth, but on the whole they were both decent, solid picks.
Edwards was not actually a bad pick in 2004; he's fucking radioactive now but in '04 he was an appealing candidate. Got some flack for the accent and the hair and makeup but he had a good populist message and what he lacked in Senate experience he made up in professional experience sticking up for the little guy in court. I gotta say, I was a fan of the guy until he turned out to be such a colossal prick. But again, that was years after he was the VP nominee.
Lieberman: Fuck Lieberman.
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Topic: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections (Read 88578 times)