“But you can't be any geek off the street, gotta be handy with the steel if you know what I mean, earn your keep!”
It’s been a bad month for veep vetters.
Earlier in June, the man in charge of vetting Barack Obama’s Vice Presidential choices, Washington insider’s insider Jim Johnson, got the ol’ heave-ho. Roundly criticized for receiving two million dollars in questionable loans from Countrywide Financial, a mortgage company that’s been accused (by Obama, among others) of being at the center of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Stating that he would never, ever, ever dream of “distracting attention from [the] historic effort," Jimmy boy stepped aside leaving a chasm as large as Unity, New Hampshire in his wake.
That’s where your clean-pocketed Today’s Snow Job team steps to the fore. We’ve come forward to offer our sterling picks for Obama’s Numero Dos for your appraisal. In return, we expect nothing more than medium to large-sized low interest loans. So, if you have me in mind, Countrywide, Ameritrust, keep in mind that prices for Strathcona townhouses are only going up…
I suppose it’s worth pointing out that, in the long run, Johnson’s firing may ultimately be a plus for the Obama campaign. After all, he was the point man when Mondale foolishly picked Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, prompting Wu-Tang rapper Gza to furnish us with the line: “Geraldine Ferraro, who’s full of sorrow, cuz the ho didn’t win, but the sun will still come out tomorrow.”
So, with sunny days in mind, let’s get down to it.
First off, the art and science of the thing. There’s no unified theory of veep vetting. Other than the resounding lack of scandals like the one ended Jim Johnson, there are a number of proposed qualities a fine vice presidential nominee may, or may not, have. In no particular order:
- They should bring you swing states (The potential biggies this time out: Ohio, Michigan, Florida. Nevada, Wisconsin, Colorado and, of course, Puerto Rico.)
- They should be a ranking member of your father’s secret, world domination-minded cabal who will help to craft your every statement and action (ie. Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney).
- They should be your ideological soulmate–the Yin to your Yang, the Tubbs to your Crockett, the Stringer to your Avon, the Ashley to your Mary-Kate. (Semi-surprisingly, Al Gore)
- Failing the above, they should fill in the gaps in your own resume/ideology/persona. You’re a man, they’re a woman. You’re from a northern state, they’re from the south. You’re inexperienced, they’ve been in the senate for a billion years. You like dudes, they like chicks. (Ie: Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln’s #2)
- If lacking in these other, more appealing traits, they should at least be endowed with such a paucity of mental competence that they make you look like a MENSA member by comparison (ie. James Danforth “Dan” Quayle.)
The problem with the last quality is that it necessarily entails a failure to reassure the people that in the event of your untimely demise a suitable second will be able to step in. In Quayle’s case, it led to an opposition ad campaign entitled: “Quayle, only a heartbeat away.” And yet, this is the catch-22 of the VP position: You have to be worthy enough to bring votes and reassurance, and yet also be enough of a lame-duck long shot that you don’t outshine the head of the ticket. Journalist Lance Morrow put in succinctly when he said, “The presidential nominee always says the person he has selected to be his running mate is the American ‘best qualified to take over in the White House in the event of my death.’ That is a ceremonial lie.”
The truth of the matter is that the selection of a vice-presidential nominee is a political, rather than quantitative, question; an attempt to guess which significant other will augment your own turn in the spotlight to the extent that you can walk home with November’s beauty prize in hand.
With that in mind and no further ado:
Fuck: Joe Biden
At first blush, Joe “Biddy Bone” Biden is all that you’d want in a veep and more. He ‘s got the wealth of legislative and foreign policy experience that Obama lacks. He’s both clean and articulate. He’s fair and from Delaware. And, most importantly, he is indisputably thugged out.
Unfortunately, Joe is a little too thugged out. His penchant for shooting verbal nine millies from the hip has led him down dark alleyways far too often for comfort. Most notably, when he said of Obama:
I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy… I mean, that’s a storybook, man.
As one blogger so aptly put it:
Our point, if we have one, is this: Joe Biden's comments are crazy ill in the worst way possible. Joe Biden says dumb shit on the regular, but this is above and beyond in several regards. But Joe Biden is a major American political figure with crazy foreign-policy intellect who likes to say insane things on the regular.
So this press remains open.
Kill: Isn’t it obvious?
It shouldn’t take Obama more than a cocaine heartbeat to decide that Hillary shouldn’t be a bullet away from the presidency.
Marry: Straight Talk-Era John McCain
He’s got a post-partisan record and oodles of experience. He served in the military. He’s adored by the national media, yet still falls short of the Guitar Hero level props that Obama gets. He’s conservative, but not too conservative… What more can you ask for?
For high hilarity, this is a move would be on par with Hillary offering Barack the nomination while he was trouncing her in the primaries. They’ll never expect it…
I’m being facetious, of course. I absolutely respect the man. He’s earned it. I think he’s a generally stand-up human being. Unfortunately, he also came out of the Vietnamese prison camps with his own particular and, I think, incorrect vision of how American foreign power should be used.
And he’s old. Boo.
As for who Obama should actually choose as his vice president…
(shrug)
I don’t have the foggiest.
In the end, elections can be lost, but not won on these decisions. That’s probably why America has such an uninspiring roster of VPs to begin with. I have to side with "Cactus Jack" Garner of Texas, F.D.R.'s Vice President, who infamously said that the vice presidency was,
"Not worth a pitcher of warm piss."
2 comments:
tour de force! you called the great emancipator a homo and found the previously missing Jim Johnson-Liquid Swords connection, and tied it all together with a G-Funk era anthem.
On the topic of ol' high-ridin' Joe Biden, I kinda think he got a bad rap on the whole clean and articulate fiasco. It's fairly obvious he meant to say mainstream afr-amer presidential candidate, unless he thinks such notable black figures as MLK Jr, Michael Jordan, and Chris Rock are dirty and mealy mouthed. Also, if I remember the details of this particular ridiculous washington controversy, Biden's defense was that there was a spoken comma after the words african-american. This means that instead of saying that Obama is the only black person to ever possess any of those qualities, Obama is the first mainstream black presidential candidate and also has many laudable qualities, which happens to be true. For any kids (or my former ESL students) who are reading this at home (because there's nothing kids and esl students love more than comment threads on obscure Canadian pop culture blogs), this is why it's important to use correct punctuation to differentiate identifying adjective clauses from non-identifying adjective clauses. You see, learning about English grammar can be fun!
However, the good Senator is still an awful awful choice for VP. That's because his political career is bought and paid for by your local friendly credit card companies. In 2005 Biden worked hard to help pass a bill to ease the pain of Visa and Mastercard by making it far more difficult to declare bankruptcy: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/003851.php
Fortunately, the Bush economy has remained strong, and there's never been a need for victims of predatory lending practices and shady mortgage rates to declare bankruptcy instead of choosing to abandon leases and cause a massive housing crisis which then triggers a downturn in the US economy...oh, wait.
I wish that post was longer.
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