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The Spectacle Blog
So argues AmSpec frequent contributor Jeremy Lott in the Washington Post.
View all comments (7) | Leave a comment
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Thomas| 4.20.09 @ 10:39AM
I will not argue with any of Mr. Lott's factual arguments, but let's put the office of Vice President into perspective.
First, the office is, essentially, a Presidential appointment, just like cabinet positions. The only difference is that the office is not subject to Senate agreement.
Second, arguing that the people are not smart enough to intelligently choose their elected politicians may well be accurate. But, if we seriously subscribe to that notion, then we have to scrap our entire form of representative government. Maybe a monarchy would work for us.
Third, in the case of Presidential succession, there would be no like minded successor. The Speaker of the House would now be the successor to the President, with all of the potential problems that brings.
Vice Presidents may be idiots, but they are the President's idiots.
MattSwartz| 4.20.09 @ 10:56AM
I agree with Thomas.
The Vice Presidency is meaningless until it becomes crucial. It would be disastrous if a sitting President's death led to the Presidency switching parties, and that is what could happen if we abolished the VP slot. This would be even worse than the loss of a Senate tie-breaker vote, which would also be a crisis-magnet.
The only solution would be to have the Presidency transfer to the highest ranking Congressional member of the President's party, and that would be undesirable because it would:
a) enshrine our present political party system in the constitution, where it has no business being
b) put us in danger of having some doddering old fool's finger on the Nuclear button
c) totally change the way the parties handled congressional seniority and leadership
Tim| 4.20.09 @ 11:07AM
Dick Cheney was no idiot. His term should be a model for the office.
Now if you had said that you wanted to abolish Joe Biden...
MattSwartz| 4.20.09 @ 11:19AM
Tom, the adults are trying to have a conversation, please don't interrupt.
We don't need to be reminded of which VP you like better. We're discussing a constitutional issue.
MattSwartz| 4.20.09 @ 11:20AM
Sorry, Thomas, I was trying to pick on Tim, not you.
Interested Conservative| 4.20.09 @ 1:38PM
I think this may have been POTUS O's first accomplishment. Do we still have a vice-president?
jojo| 1.11.10 @ 2:52AM
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