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Only two sitting presidents have seen their running-mate vice presidents elected to succeed them - Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan. Reckon the election of your sitting VP as a third term for the sitting president, and you can rank those two with FDR who personally won a third term.

So it's somewhat ironic that a sitting VP is generally a shoo-in for his party's presidental nomination - it's not that good a credential for winning election, necessarily.

Every administration puts out pious platitudes about how much its VP does - and everyone understands that that is nonsense; presidents don't even like the idea of VP any more than people like to write their own wills. But with Cheney, no one doubts that it is true.

Our republican tradition is that a person's ability and energy, and not his family, determines what office he will or will not attain. If we were true to that code, we Republicans would nominate a person who

is a popular, twice-elected governor
would be a suitable choice for the Supreme Court.

The only trouble is that the person who best fits that picture frame is not only the son of one president but the brother of another.