The role of the Vice President

[ripcord]

I know presidential candidates choose their running mates for a variety of reasons, mostly to carry a certain demographic group or geographic area. Wouldm't it be nice if our nominee chose their running mate based on looking into the future and seeing who could be groomed to be their successor? The VP has few official duties but can be used in many roles including ambassadorial and fronting the President's agenda and policies. If done right the VP could be placed in front of the public in a very positive way and given experience no other person could possibly have greatly enhancing their chance at a presidential run. I don't see how this could be a downside for our party or the nation as a whole, we have a field that contains some great young candidates let's encourage our nominee to support the future.

I know some people will probably disagree, maybe for good reasons, but I thought I would just throw it out there for people to think about.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Which is clearly why some presidential candidates have chosen running mates

who actually could be president - e.g., Clinton/Gore, Obama/Biden. Others, not so much: Bush I/Quayle, Gore/Lieberman (what was he thinking??), Kerry/Edwards, and most notably, McCain/Palin. That was the worst - as it turned out, McCain managed to hang on for another ten years, but what if he'd been elected and the strain of the presidency did him in while he was in office? I don't know whether a Palin presidency would have been worse than Trump's but it probably wouldn't have been better.

But I think there are so many good, well-qualified Democrats this time that whoever is nominated could pick any of them - just about all of them would be both electable and qualified to take over as president if necessary. If the nominee is older, e.g., Joe Biden, the running mate would probably be the likely candidate in four rather than eight years.