Thinking about vice

The vice presidency, that is. (Get your mind out of the gutter!)

I'm not going to handicap the prospective vice-presidential candidates, but let's take a few moments to think about the qualities that a vice-president should have.

Vice-presidential nominees are often--almost always--chosen for short-range political considerations, i.e., getting elected. But after the election comes serving in probably the least-rewarding job in western civilization. Or Eastern, for that matter.

The VP is the aide that the President can't fire. On the other hand, and for that very reason, the VP is also an aide who has at least a penumbral stature over and above what the President gives him/her. Thus we should hope that the VP is a person who can aid the President, perhaps by bringing an aspect of experience (with the economy in McCain's case, for instance) that the President lacks, or--and this would be my preference--through a relationship of trust and confidence between the two that makes the Vice-President a sounding board and confidant. In other words, a Vice-President with stature.

Although the President cannot fire the VP, he--or at some time she--can move the VP to the deep background. There are lots of jokes about the job of the Vice-President being to go to funerals. We'd be better off without that. Well, maybe. Clearly, the Bush administration would have been less pernicious if Dick Cheney had been sent off to more memorial observances.

I'm hoping that Barack Obama and John McCain will give at least as much thought to how his respective Vice-Presidential nominee would serve the nation in office as each does to how many votes the VP nominee might attract to the ticket.