Friday, September 19, 2008
Vice presidents
In the ongoing and important discussion of what experience qualifies a person to be vice-president and/or president, and keeping in mind that Theodore Roosevelt had less than 4 years work experience before becoming vice president and, one year later, president, consider Lyndon Johnson, than whom no one was even close to as experienced when he became Kennedy's vice president. Furthermore, he is widely regarded as having been the most agile and able at getting members of congress to do his bidding of anyone in the history of the U.S. government. We should read this and think long and hard about the qualities and experience we want a candidate to have before we decide to vote for him or her:

There was no more experienced politician selected to be Vice President than Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson served as a United States Representative from Texas from 1937-1949 and as United States Senator from 1949-1960, including six years as United States Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader and two as Senate Majority Whip [that's more than 23 years], before being selected by John Kennedy to be his V.P. With all that "experience" he expanded the Viet Nam [sic] War on the advise [sic] of Kennedy's "wiz kid", Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, which resulted in the death of over 58,000 American troops and the first defeat in U.S. military history. Obviously, it takes more than experience in foreign policy and meetings with heads of state to make good decisions as Commander-In-Chief.

(H/T to Incidental Remarkings' mother for the quotation and my friend who drew Johnson to my attention in this respect.)

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