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Gregory D.
Lee
Read Greg's bio and previous columns here
August 18, 2008
The VP Choice:
Obama’s First Executive Decision
For someone who
strives to become the 44th president of the United States,
it’s hard to imagine that Sen. Barack Obama has never made an executive
decision in his entire professional career. His first executive decision
will be his pick for vice president.
At least Sen. John
McCain was a Navy Captain who ran the service’s largest air-squadron.
Naval officers take on management responsibilities from the day they
report to their first duty station. He approved expenditures, formulated
budgets, assigned and managed key personnel and was responsible for the
overall management and safety of the squadron. Sen. Obama, on the other
hand, has only managed to get himself to work in the morning.
Sen. Obama’s selection
for VP will be telling. Will he select someone who is best qualified, or
most politically expedient? The chances of him selecting a highly
qualified woman is virtually nil, thanks to his narrow defeat of Sen.
Hillary Clinton. To choose a woman other than her would be an act of
political suicide with his base because her many hard-core female
supporters would simply abandon him. He also won’t select Hillary as his
running mate because he doesn’t want to be upstaged by her, and he
doesn’t want former President Bill Clinton as the first second gentleman
of the country. Would you want someone like him lurking around your
mansion and harassing the staff?
I can’t blame Sen.
Obama if he doesn’t select Hillary. Can you imagine the customary phone
call the vice president makes to the president every day to inquire
about his health? It would be like a death watch. “You’re still around?”
She might even “accidently” push him off the stairway of Air Force One
if she had the opportunity.
Many presidents were
former governors where they acquired executive experience before jumping
into what is arguably the biggest, most responsible job in the world.
Sen. Obama’s supporters overlook his inexperience for the sake of
change. Hopefully, if Sen. Obama is elected, he will have the good sense
to surround himself with highly qualified advisers with expertise in
everything from personnel management to national security, since he has
none. So where does he go to find people with such credentials? He’s
been tapping into the leftovers of the Clinton and Carter
administrations. This is like hiring the captain of the Titanic to
skipper your yacht.
Sen. Obama has been
vetting potential VPs for months. Those who weren’t vetted seem to make
it a point to announce on cable news channels and Sunday news programs
that they wouldn’t be interested in the position if it was offered.
I’ll also put myself
on record that I will not accept Sen. Obama’s kind offer to become his
vice-presidential nominee. Now I don’t have to explain to my friends why
I wasn’t even considered. He knew I wouldn’t accept! People who cannot
control their egos like that shouldn’t be considered in the first place.
Will Sen. Obama pick a
VP that can help him in the Electoral College, like the eager governor
of Virginia, Tim Kaine? Or will he pick someone who has foreign affairs
experience like documented plagiarizer Sen. Biden, who doesn’t have an
executive’s background, either? Is he looking for a clone to take his
place, or someone who can advise him about the whole spectrum of
management decisions that must be made as president? We should know
soon.
The timing of his
selection will be telling as well. Will he beat Sen. McCain to the punch
and make an announcement before he does, or will he wait and see who he
picks before making his choice?
During his rambling
Press Club news conference, Rev. Jeremiah Wright volunteered to be Sen.
Obama’s VP. Paris Hilton is available, and the hybrid energy policy she
outlined in her tongue-in-cheek commercial for president makes more
sense than Sen. Obama’s, so I guess that eliminates her. John Edwards
was in the running, but his philandering pretty much sealed his fate.
Still, a messiah like President Obama might resurrect Edwards to assume
a cabinet position that gives him plenty of travel and a staff he can
tap when he has uncontrollable urges.
Whoever Sen. Obama
picks for his running mate, it will reveal his executive decision-making
process. Will his pick reflect who is best for him, or for his country?
Gregory D. Lee is a
nationally syndicated columnist for North Star Writers Group. He can be
reached through his website:
www.gregorydlee.com.
© 2008 North Star
Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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