One Heartbeat Away?

      I keep seeing news stories in which Marjorie Taylor Green or Kari Lake are touted as possible V.P. running mates for Donald Trump in 2024 -- sometimes couched as a "contest" between the two women, which is arrant speculation at best.

      As far as I know, Mr. Trump has not made a V.P. pick and it would certainly be very early in the campaign for him to do so.

      But let's say everything falls out as a repeat of the 2020 contest, with Mr. Trump riding the elephant and Mr. Biden atop the donkey.  Both men will be four years older than last time and they weren't young in 2020, not even as Presidents go.  So whoever is in the warm-up circle had better be ready.

      V.P.s are usually picked for "balance:" they carry a state the top of the ticket would otherwise struggle to win, they're an experienced politician when the Presidential candidate is not (Biden in 2008 and '12, Pence in '16), they're young and female compared to a candidate who is older and male (Palin in '08, Harris in '20).  We hope they'll do okay if a big decision comes to them and they generally have -- Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford were at least adequate.  I think Mike Pence did the right thing when his back was against the wall on 6 January 2021 and in the days leading up to it.

      Kamala Harris, well, I don't much like her policy preferences, but she's an experienced politician; she knows what the stakes are and her (apparent) lack of much of a sense of humor is probably an asset in the Executive Branch.  Like Mr. Pence, I think she'd do her best to make the right decision when it mattered.

      I don't have that same feeling about Ms. Green or Ms. Lake.  I'm not at all confident that either one really understands that in the Executive Branch every marble game is for keepsies and you're playing with an entire nation's marbles.

      Fun as it may be to always look at voting though a partisan lens and ensure the other side is really irked by your pick, you're betting your future on the outcome.  It takes a grownup to do the job, and a grownup attitude to do the choosing.

      Modern politics is starting make me miss Nelson Rockefeller, and I was never a big fan.  It's making me miss Hubert Humphrey and Spiro Agnew; at least they could read a speech entertainingly.