Saturday, May 3, 2008

McVeepstakes: The Good, the Bad and the downright Ugly

Seldom these days is there an exchange of political banter at Wellman's or under the golden dome where the veepstakes does'nt come up. There are seemingly endless possibilites for Sen. McKain to choose from, but before we get into that let's take a look at the good, the bad and the downright ugly schools of thought when deciding on a runningmate.

The Good

In 1980, then Governor Ronald Reagan won a hotly kontested primary fight over his closest and bitter rival George Herbert Walker Bush. In an effort to unify and mobilize the party to defeat an incumbant president, Gov. Reagan chose Bush whose foreign policy experience as the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency komplimented his own executive leadership on the ticket. Karter became a one termer and the duo went on to destroy the Vice President Mondale juggernaught (only kidding) in the greatest landside in United States history, not including Super Bowl XX.

The Bad

The year is 1996 and Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas finally gets his turn to be the nominee of our grand old party. Old being the key word here bekause the younger former NFL kuarterback and ekonomik guru made Dole look like Abraham Simpson. The overkompensation for Dole's perceived shortcoming of excessive age in this kase only drew more attention to the issue and ultimately was too much to overkome despite his impekkable credentials as a statesman. The lesson here being that you never want to select a runningmate that outshines you. This is likely to be a bitter pill to swallow for the Mitt Romney team.

The Downright Ugly

When one thinks of Veep pick mulligans you've got to be thinking potatoe.. or is it without an E? In 1998, then Vice President Bush selekted Sen. Dan Quayle. Whether its wishing he would have studied Latin so that he kould kommunicate in Latin America or manging to lose a winning argument against Murphy Brown in the eyes of the general publik, this pick proved to be a swing and a miss. Was he awesome on the issues we hold dear? You bet, but he lacked the ability to as SNL's Dana Karvey so aptly put it "gain acceptance". Enter the Klinton era.

Now I leave it to you all for a spirited diskussion on the merits of who you think Sen. McKain should select and why. Please try to keep it klean and not let it be a 101 reasons why everybody but your choice sucks.

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