Posted on 02/20/2007 8:54:38 PM PST by Irish Rose
Republicans' Cheney Problem
By Bruce Bartlett
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Republican Party has a huge problem going into 2008. Usually, it has a clear frontrunner going into the process who is broadly acceptable to most Republicans. But in this election cycle, that is not true. The race is wide open and it is hard to predict who will be left standing when the last primary vote is cast.
One thing that can be predicted is that a great many Republicans will be dissatisfied with their party's presidential nominee. It won't matter who among those currently running ends up with the nomination, because, in my opinion, none have the capacity to unite the party or to stimulate the kind of intense support a nominee needs to win the general election.
Moreover, I think the Democrats will be united around their candidate, whoever it is. They have been out of the White House for a long time and feel, rightly or wrongly, that the last two elections were stolen from them. They won't let that happen again. Nor do I think it is likely that the Democrats will run three historically awful campaigns in a row. They are due for a rebound.
One thing that could have changed things for the better, from the Republican point of view, is if it had a sitting vice president who was a candidate. That person would at least be the prohibitive favorite for the nomination. While this is no guarantee of success in the general election, it can be very helpful. For example, it is doubtful that George H.W. Bush would have been elected in 1988 otherwise.
That the Republicans do not have a sitting vice president running for the presidential nomination in 2008 is entirely George W. Bush's doing. In 2004, he decided that he would rather have a vice president who would never question him than one who could carry on his legacy. As Bush explained in a Feb. 12, 2007 interview on C-SPAN:
"From my perspective, it is good not to have a vice president running for president. Can you imagine somebody out there running and all of a sudden saying, 'Well, I wouldn't have done it exactly that way.' When things got difficult, like they are in Iraq, I told the president that he should have done it this way. He chose another way.' In other words, there would be the tendency for a candidate who was associated with the president to feel like they needed to distance themselves during the tough moments, like right now, and that would create instability inside the administration."
Most presidents have not looked at it this way. They usually have wanted a vice president who could succeed them, to carry on and defend their policies and, perhaps, protect them and their supporters from retaliation from a political rival or a president from another party. Rather than giving the vice president an incentive to distance himself from the president, the necessity of having his endorsement has forced vice presidents to defend his policies even when he would have preferred to go in a different direction. Think of Hubert Humphrey in 1968. He probably would have opposed Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policy if he hadn't been the vice president.
Another virtue of having a vice president with ambitions of his own is that he is the only senior White House official in a position to resist the sycophancy that always surrounds the president. This is important because presidents live in a bubble, surrounded by people who owe their power and position solely to him. They are loath to be seen as "out of the loop" or to read news stories about their imminent departure, when they had no such plans. This tends to make the White House staff highly responsive to the president's wants, biases and whims.
Once into a second term, the vice president cannot be fired and his own ambitions will encourage him to pressure the president into adopting policies and taking positions that will be popular with voters. Since presidents cannot run for a third term, they would otherwise be totally impervious to public opinion. If a vice president hopes to be elected president himself, he has a strong incentive to advise the president to adopt policies that will make it easier for him to win.
For these reasons, I think Dick Cheney's lack of ambition for the presidency has been more of a handicap to Bush than the blessing he sees it as. It has fostered insularity at the White House and closed off an important avenue of influence to the president that has encouraged him to take a "go it alone" attitude, which is bad both for the country and the Republican Party.
At this point we can afford to be blatantly obvious. It would be easy to avoid the heavy handedness allegations because even Saturday Night Live gets chuckles with Dick Cheney having a heart attack after every meeting -- I'm surprised he made it this far. If he has no dog in the hunt, then let someone put in their dog.
Wait, what, the WOT is "becoming" linked to illegal immigration?!! It is already DIRECTLY linked. Not this current administration nor the next one will understand that. They will ALL act tough against terrorism, but probably no politician truly means it. We still haven't won the War on Drugs. It's been a couple of decades and a few trillion dollars. Yet, we haven't made any progress in that war. POLITICS!
Wait, what, the WOT is "becoming" linked to illegal immigration?!! It is already DIRECTLY linked. Not this current administration nor the next one will understand that. They will ALL act tough against terrorism, but probably no politician truly means it.
***We have a candidate who has some true grit on these items, as well as depth on other issues. Check out Duncan Hunter.
http://www.gohunter08.com/
Put me down as one that agrees with you.
This man has been attacked from day one, each and EVERY day. The lib Traitors, backed up by MSM, have done a good job of bringing him down.
Unfortunately, many of those that once backed him have bought off on the media propaganda and now stand ready to stab him the back....even if it brings this country down. I have nothing but disgust for those craven lickspittles.
While I do disagree with some of his decisions, I believe that he has worked his rear off for people that don't deserve the effort.
I will back President Bush until the sun burns out.
I think it depends on what you're smoking...
Majority vote is required in both the House and Senate to confirm a VPOTUS.
Congressman don't have any chance of being elected president so Hunter is dead on arrival !
To write an article about Cheney not being a candidate in 2008 and failing to make even a passing mention that his health may be a factor in the non-candidacy is simply amazing.
Why are there so many whiny wimps crying about a contested primary? I wasn't alive in 1980, but from what I know, it was a bitter fight between Reagan and Bush and probably a few others. And we came out better for it.
Not if God wants him in there!!
after breezing through some of your other posts, i will have to research ol' mitt some more before i dismiss him
I understand the problem outlined here, but I think that the wide-open Republican primary will more than make up for any weakness caused.
This is a good thing. The Republicans need this fight in order to define the soul of their party. We need to decide what is central, and what is peripheral.
To my mind, the Republicans need to define themselves as the party of small government, fiscal restraint and national security. Full stop. That's it.
Everything else should be dropped.
This is not a bad article. A Vice President with ambitions to be President would certainly change the picture for the next election.
Yes -- stifling the opposition in the primary weakens your bench, and so far as I can figure, standing VP's don't have that great of a track record:
2000: Gore (won nomination, lost election)
1988: Bush (won election)
1968: Humphrey (won nomination, lost election)
1960: Nixon (won nomination, lost election)
1952: Barkley (lost nomination)
1940: Garner (lost nomination, challenged Roosevelt)
1896: Stevenson (lost nomination)
1856: Breckinridge (lost nomination, ran as Southern Dem)
1836: Van Buren (won)
1800: Jefferson (won, challenged Adams)
1796: Adams (won)
Yeah, there are some special cases in there, and the system is different now than it was years ago. But the fact remains that standing VP's often lose, too...
Plus Dole had a pretty easy primary. And we all know how hat turned out. Let Romney and McCain and Hunter and whoever else duke it out. Whoever wins will be stronger for it.
I think the crocodile tears about Cheney 2008 lie outside reality. The problem is, I don't see the Vice President carrying any state that has more than 8 electoral votes (assuming he is not running against Hillary).
Second, George H.W. Bush and John Quincy Adams stand alone among Vice Presidents for a reason. Both followed strong, popular presidents and most Presidencies, after 8 years, have more baggage than a sitting VP can overcome.
Lastly, it would have been political suicide for the President to dump the Vice President in 2004. The Vice President, of course, could have orchestrated his own retirement, but the tenor of the times and his personal dedication to public service outweighed any petty political considerations four years hence.
In sum, we are where we are because history inexorably delivered us here. Let the best candidate emerge.
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