Should We Also Elect the Vice Presidential Candidate in the Primaries?

Should We Also Elect the Vice Presidential Candidate in the Primaries?

The only jobs assigned to the Vice President are to become President if the President is disabled or deceased, and to preside over the Senate and cast tie-breaking votes.  Yet the Vice Presidential candidate is not chosen by primaries of 50 states plus territories, but is singly chosen by the party presidential candidate.  Even though the convention votes on his or her choice, they do not vote the VP candidate down and then consider others.

If the VP candidate is a governor or senator, they have only faced election by the voters of one state, and sometimes that is a very small state, and one with no competition from a candidate from the other party.  There is no official vetting committee or process to choosing the VP candidate.

The problem with electing the VP candidate in the primaries,  is that in a primary with, say, 18 presidential candidates, the best VP candidates will probably be among them.  The fierceness of the Republican primaries ruled out a lot of chances for a joint ticket.

That being said, the VP candidate does have to be elected on the same ticket that the President runs on to assume office.  Occasionally, the VP harms the image of the joint ticket, or simply does not help it.  Factors in choosing a VP candidate are the ability to bring in a large swing state, to appeal to voting sectors not secured by the presidential candidate, to be a comfortable running mate to the presidential candidate, and, hopefully, to bring an image of being a desirable replacement President, if needed.

In 2012, Representative Paul Ryan ran to secure Wisconsin, to add a Catholic to a ticket with the Mormon Romney, and to add a budget expert, which was not really needed, since presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney already had business and state budgetary expertise.  Rep. Ryan is now Speaker of the House and has presidential bearing.

In 2008, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska was apparently selected by Republican candidate Sen. John McCain on short notice with no outside vetting, to invigorate his campaign, and as a popular public speaker.  We applaud him for choosing a woman governor.  As people know, she did not turn out to be well grounded in political issues and in foreign policy.

In 2000, head of Halliburton, Dick Cheney, was selected to vet the VP candidates for Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush.  After a very careful and unbiased process, Cheney decided that he was the best VP candidate, and this was approved by the convention.  (Had Trump been a candidate for VP, he would have noted the constitutional provision that the presidential and VP candidates had to be from different states, and Halliburton was in Texas.  However, Cheney still had a small house in Wyoming, so nobody seriously brought this up.)

(People who think that this election is somehow uniquely weird, need only look back a few years.)

There has been concern that Republican candidate Donald Trump might select an inappropriate VP candidate.  He has tried to ameliorate that by seeking party recommendations for candidates, and hiring a previous Republican vetting expert to run the choice.  Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Rep. Paul Ryan say they are not interested, but New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would be.

 

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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