Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

The quote in the title is attributed to Charles Dudley Warner, a writer who lived between 1829 and 1900. I have no idea what Mr. Warner had in mind when he penned this now famous quote but I would love to get his take on what is occurring in our country today.

As we approach the second most anticipated event of the summer following the Olympic Games we now prepare for what also occurs every four years which can also be controversial and certainly is in steeped in politics. I refer to the Democrat and Republican nominating conventions. We have reached to point in time when the Presidential presumptive nominees announce the selections of their running mates and Vice President candidates for their respective parties. This is a “kind-of-important” event, depending upon whom you ask.

Some talking heads and drive-by bloviators seem to want you to believe the person selected to run on the same ticket with the person running for President could tip the scales for whom the average person would vote in November. Others will tell you no Presidential election in the past was ever decided based upon a running mate who may have been selected to be on the ticket as Vice President. I am not sure how much weight we should give the person selected to run with either Presidential candidate. But I have to say this year seems different.

To start, neither presumptive nominee was the front runner for his respective party when all the candidates started throwing their hats into the ring soooo long ago, declaring they wanted to be elected President this November. Certainly the hands down Democrat in the lead before the first votes were cast in New Hampshire and Iowa primaries was Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama, in retrospect, seems to have come from nowhere. And while several prominent Republicans were jockeying for the lead in their party during the early primaries (can you say Rudy?) John McCain’s campaign became so anemic he had to stop flying and start taking a bus. His campaign ran out of funds at one point forcing him to resort to taking vans and leaving the press to fend for themselves.

So, it now comes down to two Presidential candidates slugging it out to get the most votes in November. To get elected they are selecting the person they believe is the very best running mate they can convince to run with them (they only have to ask). Hopefully this will be somebody to whom the American public can relate and help them capture more votes in more States using our caca meme Electoral College (a topic for another day).

The Democrats are holding their convention first. Why? Because there is a sort-of long standing agreement that states the party in office gets to hold their convention AFTER the other guys go first. How cute is that. Anyway, that means Barack Obama needed to declare his running mate first, potentially giving McCain more time to make up his mind with respect to his selection.

That brings us to the first announcement in this game of one-upmanship. Barack Obama tried to text message loyal followers, and anyone else who signed up, in an effort to give the recipients a head’s up of a few minutes before the media learned his choice this past Saturday. However, the text messages were sent hours after the news actually leaked out. After much consternation, vetting, and declaring in advance the three areas of importance that helped him make his selection, we all got the news.

Obama, 47, a first-term Unitied States senator, said he had searched for a running mate who will be prepared to step in as president, who could help him govern and who would be independent. His pick? Joe Biden, currently the six-term senior senator from Delaware. I will pass on any personal comment regarding his selection so I can move onto what prompted this blog in the first place.

Up next, John McCain’s pick. One person who has been campaigning for McCain and has been widely speculated to be McCain’s choice for running mate is, ta da, Joe Lieberman. That’s right. The here-to-fore liberal Democrat who just eight years ago was his party’s standard-bearer carrying the Dem banner and running as Al Gore’s pick for Vice President. What the heck is this all about? Even the Republicans are confused and perplexed with this wide spread rumor. Some Republican big wigs are checking behind the scenes to determine if someone who is not a Republican can run for the second highest office in the land, on the Republican ticket. Hence, my strange bedfellow quote.

As I get older and go through more political seasons, I continue to think I have seen it all. But this year, a relatively young first term United States Senator who would be the first African American to ever be elected President is running against a self admitted “party maverick” who himself is running away from the very short coat tails of his sitting President and potentially selecting a relatively unpopular Democrat as a running mate, someone who only got re-elected in his last election bid by running as an Independent – well, it just gets weirder and weirder.

Oh, by the way, lest we take for granted Joe Lieberman is McCain’s pick for his running mate, Willard think of me as Ronald Reagan “Mitt” Romney is still in the running as a “true conservative”. One issue of several that immediately comes to mind is they may have to find a way to overcome the potential negative baggage that comes with McCain’s and Romney’s combined wealth. It is reported to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Some would have you believe it exceeds our country’s Gross National Product. The facts about the combined wealth of these two guys is no secret. Together they could be a small emerging country.

John McCain has released two years of tax returns. We have learned he earned $405,000 in 2007. We also learned that he’s giving his ex-wife $17,000 a year in alimony. What we did not learn is how much he’s getting from his current wife. That’s because the returns do not include the assets of Cindy McCain, whose beer fortune is estimated at more than $100 million - a reminder that if elected McCain would be the first president to have signed a prenuptial agreement. Now that makes interesting fodder for the evening news. The current Republican Party is hardly the party of Lincoln and the “people’s party”, the one with the “big tent” and room for everyone. Nope, not this year.

Hold on tight, the next few weeks kick off the last stage of what has been a long build-up to what promises to be grand finale. That’s why we do it this way every four years, right?