Remember Dan "Potatoe" Quayle being "a heartbeat away from the Presidency"?

[Silent3]

Dan Quayle: one of the few men in politics capable of making Dubya look like a genius by comparison.

It was frightening to imagine that idiot filling the highest office in the land, but try as Democrats did, we couldn't get much traction on the "heartbeat away" argument, in trying to convince voters that a vote for the Bush/Quayle ticket was a vote for taking an unacceptable chance of putting a complete idiot in charge. (George Sr. may have been many things, but an idiot like his son, or like Quayle, wasn't one of them.)

Of course, judging by how George Jr. "won" twice twelve years later, Republicans must have been very eager to get a complete idiot into the White House for a long time, and were merely settling for an idiot-in-waiting when they voted Bush/Quayle.

Can we make the "heartbeat away" argument sink in this time? McCain is no spring chicken, and death in office is hardly that remote a possibility, even if McCain is in reasonably good health for his age now.

If McCain picks someone like Huckabee, for instance -- beloved by Christian zealots, and "charming" to those who don't know him well enough to know he's a nutjob who'd like to redo the Constitution to match the Bible -- will we be able to effectively scare independents and moderate Republicans away from a McCain/Huckabee ticket?

There seems to be a strange effect where VP picks only help a candidate, by appeasing some faction or demographic, but never hurt that much no matter how bad the VP would be as the actual President.

[Bicoastal]

1. I would dissect your post in a OP of my own where I prove you're absolutely wrong wrong WRONG...

...but I can't post at all until 3:00 PM tomorrow! Nooooooooooo!:cry:

[Silent3]

3. Prove IM wrong about what?

I'm not asserting that Huckabee on the ticket as VP wouldn't hurt McCain... I'm hoping he would, but I'm not sure history bears that out, and I'm not sure how we as Democrats would best make sure his presence on the ticket did hurt.

Do you disagree with me about past history, about whether Quayle hurt George Sr. much? Whether any VP candidate has much hurt any candidate? I'd guess there probably have been a few cases of that over the course of US history, but running mate choices just don't seem to have had much negative effect in the elections I remember over my lifetime.

Do you disagree about who among George Sr., George Jr., and Dan Quayle is the biggest idiot? :)

[Bicoastal]

4. It was a joke to celebrate the fact that your OP was the first AFTER the 3-post-per-day limit.

This is an OP of distinction, so I had to say something.

In reality, I don't disagree with you at all. :P

[shraby]

2. I remember when they were thinking of running

him for President after the v.p. stint. They'd wanted someone like * earlier, but Quayle made so many gaffes they found they couldn't get away with it.

[intaglio]

5. Oh, come on!

Surely Bush is the stupidest man to be only a heartbeat away from the Presidency ;)

[Silent3]

6. Which is even funnier considering Cheney's heart problems...

...although I'm not sure how Cheney can have a heart condition without having ever had a heart in the first place.