Rex Murphy @ National Post:
Lyndon Johnson was, prior to John Kennedy’s assassination, just a cipher of a vice-president. The Kennedys needed Texas and thought Johnson could deliver it. Other than that he was a jug-eared embarrassment to their more stylish clan.
Brutal events rescued Johnson from the forgotten valley of VP. Kennedy’s assassination brought him into his own, and a giant ego in tandem with great legislative gifts made Johnson — one termer though he was — a president of note. Though he had suffered as vice-president, Johnson was not one to mitigate the suffering of others. It was Johnson’s sour mouth we owe this cruel, brilliant, mildly vulgar putdown of Gerald Ford: “Gerry Ford couldn’t pour piss out of a cowboy boot if the instructions were written on the heel.”
That’s as crisp, caustic and cruel as it gets, and unfair to Ford, who had — contrary to Saturday Night images — both dignity and balance. But vice-presidents, up to modern times, were meant to be targets, supernumeraries save in a time of national emergency and a real threat to the president.
They’ve grown in importance, and power, since then. Dick Cheney was not a cardboard cutout. He was a decisive figure in the presidency he served. The vice-presidency, to a degree, takes on the character (and abilities) of the person who fills the spot.
Paul Ryan is a real addition to Romney’s camp. He’s young, intelligent, well-informed and articulate. He’s serious about matters which are serious. And he has a genuine personal appeal. In fact, when I think of Ryan in comparison with the Jar Jar Binks who currently serves President Obama, that bundle of malapropisms, confusion, malice and profound shallowness the world knows as Joe Biden, I think the Romney choice is a stoke of contrasting genius. Biden some people have called a “gaffe-machine.” But they struggle for real explanation, for who has fathomed the dead still waters of the mare closum of the Biden mind?
It was almost funny to hear some Democrats try to portray Ryan as a “dangerous,” too “bold” choice for Romney, exactly at the same time Biden was out on the campaign trail playing to the script of some movie only he could see. In less than two days he gave the world to understand he thinks it is still the 20th century, misnamed the state he was speaking in and most viciously, gave one of the crudest, most demeaning racist shoutouts ever.
Speaking to a mixed-race crowd, nearly half African-American, he chanted in a cheap psuedo-preacher tone about how if Romney/Ryan won, the banks were going to be — here he shrilled — “unchained.” Then in the same awkward faux-familiar voice he went one further: They, Romney and his people, “were gonna put y’all back in chains.”
Projection of the liberal/progressives own goals. If the liberal/progressives had their way, we’d all be well-shackled slaves to the machine. The plantation known as Washington DC. And the “Uncle Toms” would be the people like Maxine Waters, living in elegance at the expense of the rubes in the general population, who are too self-absorbed in their own lives to see the hate and vileness they are fed from those DC “elites”. And still plodding along wearily, not realizing that the chains holding them back are rooted in poverty and despair, and get tighter and tighter, pulling on them harder and harder, the further away from poverty they go. Naive fools, one and all.
While Obama/Biden are emailing supporters from the past and BEGGING them to come to their rallies, Romney and Ryan are over-stuffing every campaign stop.
My neighbor goes to Vegas all the time (relatives live there).
She said this (I’m paraphrasing)
“I gave up a day of my vacation to go and see Paul Ryan speak at a suburban high school in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
The gym held several thousand, the bleachers were packed, the entire gymnasium floor was packed with standees.
They finally had to stop admitting people because of fire regulations.
It was 107 degrees (4 pm).
People were still lined up outside.
Rep. Ryan went out and talked to them before he talked to us.
He came in, absolutely rocked the house, there were at least 15 standing O’s.
Ryan is amazing.
No politician’s weasel words, just real, inspiring leadership, and ideas.
Fantastic experience.
The event had only been announced the day before, and all of us showed up by word of mouth (I had accidentally heard about it on a local news show the day before.) ”
PS,
Obama/Biden are actually saying they are INTENTIONALLY limiting their crowd size!!!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/aug/18/obama-camp-we-are-intentionally-limiting-crowd-siz/
@Nan G:
That he would go out in the heat and speak with the people there first so that they could leave early and find comfort elsewhere speaks more for the man than anything that he said.