Word: ticket
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Take, for instance, my airplane dilemma. I'm poor enough to afford coach class, so that is where I must buy my ticket. But coach class makes me miserable because I am folded up like a lawn chair and stuck in a seat I couldn't fit in when I was 12 and with no real place to move, especially after the bozo in front of me reclines his seat those precious three inches. He may not think much of taking those three inches, but it means a whole helluva lot to me. If this were a utilitarian calculation...
That is a good description of a presidential ticket - or of what becomes of the presidential ticket, once elected...
Does the vice presidential part of the ticket really matter? Franklin Roosevelt chose his vice presidents for reasons of practical politics, with an (ultimately misplaced) confidence in his own immortality. Thus John Nance ("Cactus Jack") Garner signed on because F.D.R. needed the Texas delegation's votes at the 1932 convention. (Garner turned into an irascibly seditious anti-Roosevelt; at cabinet meetings, Roosevelt would say, "We can talk today - the Vice President isn't here." He ran against Roosevelt in the 1940 convention and was replaced by Henry Wallace...
...doubt very much that either Kerrey or Whitman will be in the race this year. I simply say they would be the running mates who would bring the most to each ticket. Kerrey and Whitman may offend the faithful on either side, and may for that reason be unchoosable; but Whitman and Kerrey would bring some attractive magic to the middle ranges of the electorate, among the independents who will decide the election...
...what he thought of Bill Clinton of Arkansas. Gore sneered: "Clinton hasn't got a clue." Kerrey, a lighter, funnier, and infinitely more authentic man than Gore - and a war hero, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor in Vietnam - would bring a certain connectedness and humanity to the ticket, and would serve as a foil to distract attention from Gore's Stepford quality. The two could even play it for endearingly comic effect...