Garner was once asked to evaluate the office of Vice
President. He said it wasn’t worth a warm bucket of spit. Actually, Garner used
a different word, but post-Edwardian sensibilities would not allow its
appearance in the public media of the day – so, spit it was. Since Roosevelt’s
day, sensibilities have evolved.
Senator Edward Kennedy -- denominated “the lion of the
Senate” by fellow Democrats who willingly overlooked the significant part Kennedy
played in the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick
Island -- served Massachusetts as its senator for 47 years, until he joined the
angels in Heaven. At the time of his death, Kennedy was the longest continually
serving senator in the U.S. Congress. By 2009, when Kennedy died, there were little
or no Edwardian sensibilities left to ruffle.
The deaths while in office of such political lions as Roosevelt
and Kennedy are reminders to the rest of us that politics holds out to privileged
politicians no special immunities from the grim reaper. Lions also are mortal.
When the great politician and cleric Cardinal Richelieu died, the Pope of the
day, a lesser politician than Richelieu and a better cleric, was asked to
comment. He said, “If there is no God, Richelieu will have lived a good life;
and, if there is a God, he will have much to answer for.”
The American populace is not God and, increasingly,
politicians are not answerable to the always disorganized democratic mob, so
strong are the usufructs of incumbency at a time when individual politicians
have become mini-political parties, raising their own campaign funds from Big
Business, influential PACS and mass marketing techniques. And, of course, the
media, sometimes lost in adoration of incumbents, also boosts the power of
political power players.
It’s been ages since Joseph Pulitzer, after whom the coveted
Pulitzer Prize is named, said that good reporters should have no
friends. Good reporters should ask themselves when was the last time an
incumbent with whom they regularly did political business refused to return
their calls as a result of a displeasing story.
The top of the ticket candidates in 2020, Republican
President Donald Trump and likely Democrat Presidential Nominee Joe Biden, are
both incumbent politicians with records to defend. It is generally conceded –
perhaps most especially by Democrats – that former Vice President Joe Biden’s
choice of his second in command will be extremely important. Biden, so far, has
not been tested on the presidential campaign field of battle because, it has
been said, the Coronavirus infestation, perhaps on the wane by Election Day,
has forced his campaign underground.
Old campaign warhorses, such as former U.S. Senator from
Connecticut Chris
Dodd, have stepped forward to assist Biden in choosing his Vice
President. No one doubts that Trump’s choice for 2020 will be current Vice
President Mike Pence.
It may seem to some commentators ironic that Biden’s choice
of Vice President mirrors that of Franklin Roosevelt’s. Garner obviously was
wrong in his estimation of the Vice Presidency. Roosevelt was wrong in choosing
Wallace as his Vice President, a man further to the left than Roosevelt on many
matters important to Democrats and the country. And Truman, perhaps considered
at the time a throwaway choice for Vice President, was the right man at the
right time after Roosevelt had left the stage. During Truman’s 82 day Vice Presidency,
Roosevelt never discussed major policies with his Vice President. Truman, for
instance, learned of the Manhattan Project and the atom bomb only after he had
become President. But he knew what to do with the bomb and clearly had Stalin’s
number. The Truman Doctrine was the central pillar of an ultimately successful U.S.
Cold War policy.
Among some Democrats, Biden is considered a safe moderate at
a time when his party has been for some time caroming down dark and eccentric
political corridors. As in Roosevelt’s case, there may not be many more years
left in Biden’s hourglass. Biden will be 77 if he achieves presidential office
and, like Roosevelt, he does have underlying heath issues. Biden has had two
brain aneurysm operations.
The important question up for discussion is: Will the moderate
wing of the Democrat Party, now a bare remnant of the glory days of the John F.
Kennedy Camelot, be swept away by the current progressive movement, or will people
like Dodd and, John Droney, both old Democrat moderate warhorses, be able
convincingly to appeal to the angels of Biden’s better nature?
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