Heartbeat Away

The nomination of Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate is a sobering and serious event considering the history of that office over the past 60 years. During that time three Vice Presidents have become President without being elected to that office.

Harry S. Truman was thrust into the Presidency upon the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Lyndon Baines Johnson became President when John F. Kennedy was assassinated; and Gerald Ford ascended to the office when Richard M. Nixon, facing impeachment, resigned.

The fact that the Vice President is but a heartbeat away from the Presidency was also underscored with the assassination attempts on Presidents Ford and Ronald Reagan. Had they not survived, Vice Presidents Nelson Rockefeller and George H.W Bush would have become Presidents.

Two other VPs actually stood in temporarily when Section 4 of the 25th Amendment -- replacement of the President under health circumstances -- was applied. Nixon was the stand-in President during three illnesses of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the first Bush stepped in during Reagan's colonoscopy.

So, while Palin's qualifications as a person able to field dress a moose and cheer on her hockey playing children while still governing the country's least populous state are interesting, do they prepare her to step into perhaps the most powerful office on the planet on a moment's notice? How one answers that question becomes academic if 57 days from now U.S. voters elect the McCain-Palin ticket. But think for just a moment about the comparison of Palin with HST, LBJ and Ford in the context of preparation for the Presidency. 

That's what I'm talking about.

The 2nd Republican Party

I have faithfully watched every national political convention -- Democratic and Republican -- since 1960. Most of the time I have voted for the Democratic candidate but watched the GOP convention as well, trying to keep an open mind. And, I must say, I have never watched a convention of the in-party in which that party's convention speakers ignored the sitting President and the accomplishments of that administration until this week's gathering in St. Paul, Minn.

Wednesday night's speeches were typical. Rudy Guiliani, the keynote speaker, spoke about the legacy of the Reagan presidency but said not one word about the George W. Bush legacy. Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin followed with a fiery, sniping speech and never mentioned Bush or any of his administration's accomplishments in the past eight years (although she did say John McCain supported the Iraq War Surge, thus supporting the President).

It is as if McCain and Palin have started a third party, a sort of Second Republican Party. They have promised to include alternative energy initiatives as part of their platform, something the Bush administration has resisted. They have promised to cut taxes and reduce government spending, conveniently ignoring the fact that the Bush administration, which inherited the largest federal budget surplus in history, in eight years built up the largest federal deficit in history.

It's as though McCain-Palin Maverick Party is going to turn things around, doing all the things that the Bush Republican Party failed to do in eight years.

 In a country where nearly 40% of the citizens say they are having a hard time affording food, we have the party in power offering to us a national ticket that promises to restore the economy and steer us back to prosperous times. Some of the news media pundits covering the convention said this McCain-Palin "reform-maverick" strategy might work. If it does, it will be a miracle. But, hey, I thought it was impossible for George W. Bush to get elected in the first place.