Candidates should not pick running mates

[cthulu2016]

VP is a constitutional office, not some "serving at the pleasure of the president" deal.

No individual should pick a major party candidate for a high constitutional office. The party should. (On paper the party does, of course, but a tradition has developed that the candidate picks and the convention ratifies. A candidate has a right to state a preference, of course, but the convention should feel free to pick whoever they prefer.)

Had the convention picked the VP candidate, here are some recent VP contenders we would surely not have seen:

Ferarro
Quayle
Kemp
Liebermann
Cheney
Palin

The loss of Palin and Ferarro would be amply offset by Hillary in 2008. And a woman being chosen by a convention, rather than as a campaign publicity stunt, is more meaningful anyway.

Bush I and Edwards would probably have stayed the same. Gore and Mondale and Bentsen and Biden and Dole are "guys a convention might have picked" party stalwarts. Not that those particular men would have gotten the nod, but they are in the ballpark.

Would Huckabee have been any better than Palin? Well, if the convention chose the VP Huckabee wouldn't have been the VP candidate in 2008... Romney would have. Romney wouldn't have dropped out because he would have had something left to fight for.

[mainstreetonce]

1. Another possibility

They run as a team through the primary process. At least that way the voters have a say.

[geardaddy]

2. Didn't they used to elect them separately?

[cthulu2016]

3. Yes.

They are distinct offices and candidates used to routinely have VPs not of their chosing. Usually the person with the second most delgates, but not always if there was bad blood.

(Had the 2000 election gone to congress we might have had Bush as prez and Lieberman as VP, since the senate picks the VP. I don't recall whether we had the senate or not in 2000)

In 1956 Stevenson announced he was happy with whoever the convention chose. JFK mounted an effort to be the running mate in '56 and almost made it.

[onenote]

12. The VP also used to be elected separately

The candidate receiving the second largest number of electoral votes became VP. I don't imagine anyone wants to go back to that system.

Nor do I hear any hue and cry for having a separate popular vote for the VP slot.

Yes its a "constitutional" office, but I don't see why that has any particular bearing on how the nominee is selected (and at an extreme would suggest that there ought to be separate votes for VP and President)

[sabrina 1]

4. That was one of the things about Game Change that stood out for me. A few

political operatives chose someone for the sole purpose of 'sticking it' to Democrats. Looked like the used Google a lot to find someone who, in their view, would compete with Democrats in order to 'win'. Winning a competition was all it was about for them. No thought about the country.

While people are giving props to Schimdt for admitting what he did (was it possible not to?) I blame the political operatives first and foremost for putting the country in a situation where someone like Palin could have ended up in the WH.

That choice should never be left up to a few political operatives whose main goal is, and I believe it was mentioned in the movie, to protect their careers as political operatives. Schmidt was worried later about his career. And the only mention of what a Palin presidency might do to the country was when Schmidt asked one of the other operatives if he would be 'comfortable with her as VP' and the response was a shrug.

Also forgotten in all the accolades for Schmidt and Wallace is the fact that even after they knew she had some severe problems, the least of which was her lack of knowledge, they continued to try to win that election with her one heartbeat away from the presidency.

I found them to be exactly as we thought back during the election after her Convention speech, immoral Rightwingers who were willing to do anything to win. Nothing about the movie changed my mind.

She is getting all the blame, but they are equally, actually more responsible for the fact that the country was nearly saddled with her as VP and possibly POTUS. As it is, she is still out there poisoning the political debate. Schmidt & C0 are responsible for that.

[jobycom]

6. Both sides are guilty of that.

Kerry hated Edwards and knew he was a fraud, but he chose him anyway because of the poll numbers. The party delegates likely would have chosen him, too--I was at the Texas state convention, and Edwards put on quite a show.

[sabrina 1]

7. That's a shame. I guess the VP position has never been considered to be very important, although

it probably always should have been so long as they are next in line to the presidency.

It really was scary to see how she was chosen. There was less thought about what the job entailed and who should occupy it, than there is about choosing people for the latest Reality TV Show.

[trof]

11. "not worth a bucket of warm piss." - V.P. John Nance Garner

In 1932, Garner ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination against Governor of New York Franklin Roosevelt. When it became evident that Roosevelt was the strongest of several candidates, although he had not yet received a majority of delegates (thanks to opposition figures and despite receiving most of the popular support), Garner cut a deal with Roosevelt, becoming his Vice-Presidential candidate. He was re-elected to the Seventy-third Congress on November 8, 1932, and on the same day was elected Vice President of the United States, making him the only man to serve as both Speaker of the House and President of the Senate on the same day (March 4, 1933). He was re-elected Vice President in 1936 and served in that office from March 4, 1933, to January 20, 1941. Garner once described the Vice-Presidency as being "not worth a bucket of warm piss."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nance_Garner

[sabrina 1]

14. Unless the President had died or had to leave office for some other reason.

And then, there was Cheney!

I think Cheney changed people's opinions of the importance of the VP, even if the POTUS remains in office.

Anyhow, thanks for the link.

[jobycom]

5. Cheney and Lieberman would have still manipulated their way in.

I seriously doubt a convention would be any better at picking a running mate than a candidate. Maybe worse, as they would get swayed by some emotional or pseudo-logical appeal at the last moment. I mean, seriously, who would be more likely to know that Palin was a fraud--McCain and his exploratory committee who had presumably met her, or a bunch of delegates who had just listened to a glitzy presentation on why she was such a smart choice?

Then again, a convention is no worse than any other method, I guess. No system is going to be idiot-proof in a democracy where idiots vote.

[onenote]

8. How would it work

When would VP candidates first announce their interest in the job? Would there be separate primaries? Would someone running for President be barred from running in a VP primary?

Or would it be a completely unstructured nominating process held at the convention? Could the Presidential candidate endorse a candidate for VP? If that happened, why wouldn't the result be pretty much what we have now since the delegates that decide the nominee for VP would be the same delegates who are loyal to the Presidential nominee?

And what evidence do you have that Ferraro, Quayle, Kemp, Lieberman, Cheney, and Palin wouldn't have gotten the nomination under whatever substitute procedure you think would replace the current one?

[cthulu2016]

9. If...

If a candidate states a preference and orders all of his delegates to vote for that preference and they all do then the system would be the same as today.

So much of this is poliical culture and expectations, of course. It is about how the delegates perceive their own role... as active representatives of, or the embodiment of, the party or as a rubber stamp for the nominee.


But candidates used to stand back and let the party chose. Even as late as 1956 Stevenson announced he would be proud to run with whoever the convention chose. (It was almost JFK.) And other times they were mindful of the party. FDR knew a lot of folks at the convention didn't like the idea of him dying in office and pro-soviet VP Wallace becoming President, so he switched to Truman.

People let it be known they were seeking VP and had their backers lined up. Their names were put in nomination. And so on.

A rubberstamp convention would pick all the same people on my list, but since none of them had a single delegate at the convention and no big party backing in the room it's hard to see the convention pulling any of them out of a hat.

No magic answer... if the candidate announces a choice and the delegates rubber stamp the candidate's choice then we are where we are.

[trof]

13. How it works in Alabama:

Governor and Lieutenant Governor.
Two separate races on the ballot.
We have wound up with a repug governor and a Dem Lt. Governor.
Makes no sense to me.
If the governor is incapacitated, the succeeding Lt. Governor may have a whole different agenda.

[scheming daemons]

10. I disagree... it is the first presidential decision a candidate makes

And as such, it tells the electorate a lot about a candidate.