You have to hand it to those Republican presidents. Since Reagan they really know how to pick a vice president. George H W Bush chose Dan Quayle as his running mate. What better insurance could he have against assassination? Who would be wacky enough to try to murder Bush if that left Quayle in charge of the country? The guy isn’t smart enough to run a lemonade stand, to say nothing of the country.
Then Bush junior went dad one better in choosing Dick Cheney as his vice president. Anyone who hated Bush the younger enough to contemplate assassination would have to consider what the country would be like with Cheney at the helm in name as well as in deed.
We might have thought that this weird kind of assassination insurance was just something that the Bushes practiced, but John McCain evidently thinks it’s a great idea too. He chose a running mate who combines Quayle’s cluelessness with Cheney’s ruthlessness. God help the country if she ever had to replace the 72-year-old John McCain.
