Obama vice president: the anti-Cheney

Democrat Barack Obama laid out his criteria last night for his vice president.

Amid a frenzied guessing game about who Obama will select, the candidate himself said he wants someone "who has integrity, who's in politics for the right reasons." He also wants a strong voice who can march into the Oval Office and tell the president he's wrong on a policy decision. Somebody "who knows where he came from" and wants to "grow the country from the bottom up."

Mostly, at a rally in Raleigh, N.C., Obama outlined what he doesn't want in a vice president. And it sounded a lot like, well, an anti-Cheney.

Here's what I won't do. I won't hand over my energy policy to my vice president. I won't have my vice president engineering my foreign policy for me. The buck will stop with me, because I'll be the president.

Oh, and one more thing. Just in case it wasn't clear before.

My vice president also, by the way, will be a member of the executive branch. He won't be one of these fourth branches of the government where... he is above the law.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Comments

[Gary Bonner]

We Americans are about to "do it again!" Americans like simple three-to-five word answers for just about everything. We use our text messages and email to communicate largely in three-to-five word bursts. The problem is we seem to like our Presidents that way as well.

John McCain went on Rick Warren’s forum and gave three-to-five word answers to a series of questions about some fairly complex issues and we're ready to make him President. He's up by 5 points in the latest polls.

We seem to have an aversion to "thinking men" these days. We like men who see the world as a series of simplistic choices between "right" and "wrong," "left" and "right," "us" and "them," "freedom" and "terrorists."

In 2000 we had a choice between a smart complex thinker and a simple "three-to-five word" guy. We spurned the complex thinking smart guy and we chose George Bush. In 2004, once again, we had a choice between another smart complex thinker and the "three-to-five word" answer guy. We chose again, the "three-to-five word" guy. What did it get us? A war based on a lie, loss of world opinion and prestige, a deepening recession, spiking gas prices, a housing crisis and continued erosion of highway infrastructure. Now our problems are even more entrenched and more complex than before.

Yet, we don't seem to have learned anything. We refuse to believe that doing the job of President really is "rocket science." Thy President really does have to be smart and an effective leader. He will have to be a complex thinker who solves complex problems and not merely someone who "surrounds himself with smart people." The President has to know what the hell he's doing.

But here we go again. We're going to elect a bitter 72 year old guy who longs for the way things were yesterday. He can't use a computer. The information age passed him by. He sees the world as "us" and "them." He graduated near the bottom of his class. Beyond being a former POW who complained about pork barrel spending, he has few accomplishments AND he answers questions about complex issues in "three-to-five words."

I'm getting that "sinking" feeling again.

[Jim Seigler]

I am sick and tired of all the Bush bashing. Bush inherited an economy that was in a recession and a sagging stock market. Eight months after he took office our country was attacked by extremists who have only one goal, to do away with our Western ways of life.

People like to always say we went to war for all the wrong reasons, "there were not weapons of mass destruction", yet it is a known fact that Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen with biological weapons. Then right after September 11th, our country was hit again with our own biological weapons attack, on a US based anthrax attacks. Granted few people were killed by this attack, but the overall psychological damage to us was enormous.

To be a President you have to have the balls and the convictions to make tough decisions based on many different issues; then have the courage to stick to your convictions. The last thing America needs as a president right now is someone who does not have the courage to do this and thinks that we as a country can and should negotiate with terrorists. I suggest we look up the definition of a terrorist and realize these are not rational people who make logical decisions.

Our economy right now needs help and lets all quit blaming Bush because he has nothing to do with it. If you want to blame anyone blame your Congressmen and Senators (BTW, look at their approval ratings), because they are the ONLY ones who can impact the domestic issues that need to be addressed to set us straight. For Obama to suggest we tax oil companies and redistribute that money to everyone is one step away from socialism. I would expect policy decisions like this to come from Cuba, not the USA.

My biggest concern is when most Americans go into the pols in @80 days they they will cast their votes based on the last sound bite they hear the night before, not sound well thought decisions based on policies to change our country.

20 years from now when history looks back and hopefully we are seeing more and more stability in the Middle East, they will realize and give at a minimum some credit to a guy who had the courage to make the tough choices and stand by his convictions.

[Ken Hixon]

"20 years from now when history looks back and hopefully we are seeing more and more stability in the Middle East, they will realize and give at a minimum some credit to a guy who had the courage to make the tough choices and stand by his convictions."

Twenty year from now historians will have even more insight (and documentation) to reaffirm that George W. Bush was the worst president this country has ever suffered. His policies -- international and domestic -- have been absolute failures. The damage done my his administration will not be mitigated by time -- it will only be magnified.

[Dennis]

I've always thought Biden would make a great Secretary of State and that Hillary would do well operating the overnight switchboard at the White House.

As long as Obama avoids the opposite extremes of the Dan-Quayle and Dick-Cheney types I'll be happy.

[MCJ]

GB there's a reason Bush has the lowest ratings of any American President ever...

You don't attack a nation that has done nothing to you. Iraq wasn't involved in 9/11 at all.

You don't lower taxes when going to war and then tell people to shop instead of sacrifice.

You don't look the military experts in the face when they give you the number of troops it will take to win the peace and tell them you only need about a 1/3 of that number and then overrule them and even fire them for disagreeing with you. And this by two freaking chickenhawks.

You don't dismantle oversight for the mortgage industry at the behest of the banks, just to keep the economy afloat.

Do you realize the price of gas has quadrupled in Bush's 8 years? That's not by accident, it's by design.

You sure your initials aren't GWB? You're about as clueless I'm afraid.

[Disappointed]

As an anti-Bush Obama supporter in the rust belt, I too am becoming disillusioned with both campaigns. Obama originally ran on a platform of progressive change, tough choices, and equally distributed pain for all in order for the country as a whole to grow. Now he too is pandering to the myopic populace, promising 'peace/bread/land' to the vast middle class by way of tax breaks and free government checks -- and no sign of reducing spending. Sigh. Either way, Obama or McCain, we're soooo screwed again.

Mencken pegged it a century ago:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.