Sarah Palin's book tour has aroused the ire of McCain staffers and everyone who thinks she is utterly unqualified to be president or to have been selected as the vice presidential nominee by the septuagenarian candidate of the Republican Party. They point to her minuscule tenure in the Alaska governor's office, fumbled interviews and seeming lack of knowledge about much having to do with running the country. But if you think about the vice presidential selections since World War II began, is Sarah Palin even the worst? A quick review of contenders:
1. Spiro Agnew. Driven from office for bribery charges, he resigned in
1973. Before that, Agnew had been the governor of Maryland for less than
two years when Richard Nixon plucked him from obscurity--the same
amount of time that Palin was in office. Sure, Agnew had been Baltimore
County executive and not mayor of Wasilla, but in terms of corruption and temperament, has there been anyone worse in memory? And he wasn't
really qualified either.
2. Richard Nixon. Before Watergate, before the invasion of Cambodia, before the Disraeli-like
expansion of government under his tenure--EPA, OSHA, affirmative
action--there was Richard Nixon, the vice president. Qualified? Sure,
he'd been a senator and a congressman and a McCarthyite witch hunter.
Suppose, given what we know now about Nixon's paranoia, Eisenhower
had died in office. Would you have wanted Nixon dealing with Stalin?
Khrushchev during the height of the Cold War? Leaving aside how he
might have handled the Cuban Missile Crisis had he beaten John Kennedy
in 1960, was the Tricky Dick of the '50s really someone you wanted to
see in the Oval Office? You can say some good things about his
presidential tenure, but the combination of his personality and the '50s
and him as commander in chief is a frightening thought.
3. Henry
Wallace. I hate to speak ill of a former editor of my alma mater, The
New Republic. But Wallace, FDR's second vice president, after John
Nance Garner and before Harry Truman, had a long history as being a naif
about Soviet expansionism and dreamy notions of one-world government.
Thank God FDR dumped him from the ticket in 1944 and his 1948
third-party progressive candidacy didn't derail Harry Truman's
reelection.
4. Geraldine Ferraro. The third term congresswoman from Queens and favorite of the late House Speaker Tip
O'Neill was a bold choice for Walter Mondale in 1984. But was the first woman
to be selected as vice presidential nominee by a major party really
ready for office? Her husband skated past corruption charges. Her
hapless 1998 Senate bid ended with defeat by Chuck Schumer and her
career as a prosecutor, while admirable, wasn't the best Oval Office
prep.
5. John Edwards. We now know what a rapscallion and liar
Edwards was. A few thousand votes different in Ohio and he would have
been President John Kerry's vice president. The thought is not deeply
comforting. He had a trial lawyer's facility with words and a genuine
compassion for the poor, but was he so much more qualified than Sarah
Palin after four years in the U.S. Senate?
I'm leaving out some
picks that I think get a bad rap. Dan Quayle was qualified to be veep.
So was Thomas Eagleton, the senator from Missouri whose nomination was
pulled after it emerged that he'd undergone electroshock therapy.
Most have been more than qualified: George H.W. Bush, Henry Cabot
Lodge. You could argue that the worst pick of all was the one with the
longest resume: Dick Cheney. In other words, the doubts about Palin are
justified, but some historical perspective is important, too. We've seen
worse.
Don't forget Aaron Burr.
And please don't forget the Senator from CT, who was not the Democratic nominee for his seat this time around.
I regret much about Gore's loss, but having Joe serve as VP is not one of them.
Andrew Johnson.
So, just to be clear, a four-year Senate career isn't enough for a veep à la Edwards, but is sufficient for a president.
To be clear, the president has been in elected office since 1996. The US Senate was John Edwards first entry into politics. Technically, though, John Edwards, by the time he was on the national ticket, had been in the senate for the full 6-year term. He was not going to win re-election, so he did the natural thing: he ran for president.
I dunno, I think a lot of this list is based off of stuff we only learned well after the campaign- Agnew's corruption, Nixon's paranoia, Edwards' affair. And very few of these guys actually hurt their ticket, as Palin well might have done.
So I guess it depends on what we're asking- "worst" in terms of holding the office, or "worst" in terms of helping the ticket?
I like how intelligence and/or actual knowledge about any policy issues isn't even mentioned in this assessment. The whole post is based on biography/resume, and vague assertions about temperament... and yet, in the second-to-last sentence, you acknowledge that even one of the most qualified veep picks, dick cheney, was a disaster. Anyway, this whole post is just a bunch of careless assertions masquerading as analysis.
Seriously, besides Agnew, all these people are significantly better suited to the role than Palin. Only reason I leave Agnew out is because I don't know enough about him.
Sarah Palin is totally unqualified to be President. She is not smart enough, wise enough or balanced enough for the role. She has no regard for facts or truth, like Bush. One of her core values is she embraces mediocrity and stupidty as important American traits. Her character is seriously flawed, like Nixon's, with none of the inante intelligence Nixon had. She could not even make it through one term as governor in a state with a guaranteed budget surplus.
Stop trying to put lipstick on this pig. Find a real Republican to support, one that might have a shot at putting America back on the path of greatness again. Sarah Palin is a joke. I have no clue why you people can't see her for the very obviously limited, biased and unfocused person she is.
Lieberman (I-Aetna) was an awful choice. Giving that whiny, egotistical, sop a national platform was the worst mistake Al Gore ever made. Though the media would have us think it was when he sighed during the debate with Dubya.
Was John Edwards "so much more qualified than Sarah Palin after four years in the U.S. Senate?"
I would bet that Edwards could name, off the cuff, the names of a couple of newspapers or magazines he reads.
So if by "qualified" you mean "having at least the same depth of knowledge you would expect from a smart 8th grader", yes, Edwards was vastly more qualified than Palin.
I'm not at all convinced that John Edwards was remotely qualified to be president. Or vice president. To be clear, he was elected in 1998, so in 2004 he'd been a senator for 6 years, even if he'd been campaigning for the better part of two of them.
But as was displayed again and again throughout the campaign, the dude was an empty suit, and it's been revealed that Kerry couldn't stand him and didn't trust him before he picked him. At this point, it seems pretty clear that he would have been better off with his first choice: Gephardt.
Palin still goes number 2 on that list, with a strong case for number 1.
If you're going to claim there are five weaker candidates, you need to pick five weaker candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find a few in the 19th century.
"had a long history as being a naif "
Dear Boy do go on...
Certainly you had better things to do than to repeat the tripe you've heard while tipping pints.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.” - Thomas Pynchon
Palin still goes number 2 on that list, with a strong case for number 1.
Absolutely. Some of these people were jerks, and may have had bad character, but broadly speaking they all seem likely to be more competent and knowledgeable about the world than Sarah Palin. I mean, it's a shame that John Edwards, to take one example, couldn't keep it zippered. But would anybody seriously prefer that it be Sarah Freakin Palin sitting across the table from Hu Jintao? Come to think of it, would anybody want the hockey mom dealing with Stalin, or DeGaulle, or Gordon Brown, or Netanuyahu? Good grief.
"A few thousand votes different in Ohio" indeed.
As numerous investigators have pointed out that, "Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted - enough to have put John Kerry in the White House."
When Ahmed stuffs the election boxes in Iran or that quisling mayor of Kabul rigs the show in Afghanistan it's obvious fraud. When Dubya and the Repugs do it (twice), the process is merely streamlined and Democratic voters are just "losers"!
With respect to Edwards, I think Bill Maher says it best, "In France even the mistresses have mistresses. To not have a lady on the side says to the voters 'I'm no good at Multi-tasking!'"
Talking heads can yak all they want about who's their least favorite pol, but it won't change the fact that America is one default payment away from becoming its own failed state.
If Henry Wallace had been VP when Roosevelt died then the world may have beena very different place. Universal healthcare, ending segregation, friendly relations with the USSR. Doesn't sound too bad to me.
I'm with zephyr1. A lot of the good we associate with the New Deal were thanks to Wallace, who had a lot more vision and moral backbone than Roosevelt, who was very cautious (sound familiar?).
OK, you have found some other bad choices. However, Palin still clearly ranks as the worst of them.
Agnew was corrupt, sure. Edwards an empty suit, ok. But while you can be removed from public office for corruption, or forced to resign because of sex scandals, you cannot be forced from office for sheer incompetence. And can you name anyone competing at the Presidential level who can even nearly compete with Palin's incompetence? I mean sheer, utter, incompetence. Name another who simply cannot put together a clear sentence off the cuff, let alone use proper grammar in a scripted speech. Name another who has so little a grasp on policy. She is, bar none, the worst.
It used to be that being a successful governor was more than ample qualification for President. Since the campaign, in which she was horribly mismanaged, Palin has shown more than adequate grasp of national and international issues; and, at the outset, she had more foreign relations knowledge than Bill Clinton had when he first ran for President. All he knew anything about was a little about the economy. But they all learn. She did not do well with Couric, true, but she does very, very well now, as with her interview with Bill O'Reilly, who is a tough interviewer. She was not only an outstanding governor, she is basically honest, forthright, and supports what's right for AMERICA, not the globe. So give her a break and let her show you what she knows and what she can do.
Delusional much? She quit as governor, that's truly outstanding, isn't it. She didn't even serve one full term. Foreign policy? Just last week she said one of the most stupid, ignorant and dangerous things in foreign policy since that idiot Balfour asked "Why can't the Jews and Arabs just sit down together and settle this like good Christians?" Her end-times hunger for the apocalypse should not inform our foreign policy and encouraging Israeli settlements so recklessly and stupidly as she did last week should disqualify her for any elected office.
How about Rear Admiral James Stockdale? As bad as any of the aforementioned candidates were (or still are), I don't know how he isn't at the top of the list. Yes, I do think he was even worse than Caribou Barbie.