***Official Presidential Nomination Withdrawal Thread*****

I'm still trying to figure out how not knowing why you voted for something all these years later is actually worse than LYING about dodging Bosnian sniper fire. Most folks don't expect Presidents to know everything; we should be able to expect some basic honesty.

Bamaro said:

FWIW, Female life expectancy in the US is about 5 years more than male

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Which makes Sarah Palin Presidential timber, right?

OreBama said:

I was just talking about the age issue with my family recently. I'm sure you also remember how Dems and the press (same thing) did that with Bob Dole almost twenty years ago and he's still alive btw. It is sickening and completely dishonest.

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You forgot one.

Tidewater said:

It is now obvious that the Democrat party is fully invested in Hillary. Webb is now gone. Bernie will be destroyed (photo of him in bed with a goat or something along those lines). Chaffee and O'Malley will be told to throw their campaigns if they want to be considered for cabinet positions. H is the last person standing. (Unless indicted, then she can channel her inner Eugene Debs and run from jail as "Prisoner Number 9653.")
In 2008, the Democrats made a big deal of McCain's age (he was born in August 1936, so he was 72 at the time of the election). Actuarial tables said the odds of him living through two terms was limited. (Yet, somehow, McCain has beaten those odds. Maybe it is due to how "mavericky" he is.)
Hillary is 11 years younger (born in October 1947), but it is now 8 years later, so she will be 69 years old at election and 73 if she runs for re-election.

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Might also be due to the Senate not being anywhere near as stressful as the Presidency, too.

You have to remember something - no President has died in office in over fifty years now. No VP has had to take over for a President during his term in over 40 years now. A person has to be about 50 years old to have even the faintest recollection of Ford taking over for Nixon and closer to 60 to have a real recollection of the drama of how that is.

Looking at the US Census Bureau numbers, about 24% of the US population is 55 and over. In other words AT BEST - only one out of five people now living even know what it's like to have a President not complete his term. And certainly a percentage of those over 70 develop dementia (it's a normal development, not slamming anyone old since my day may be coming) and don't have much recollection of it, either.

There was a period of time when every single President elected in the year ending in 0 died in office (1840-1960). That meant that about every 20 years it happened and so the electorate at large had experience the loss of a President and the instability that can bring a country. I think its why nobody (virtually nobody) takes the Vice-Presidential nominee seriously - they haven't ever seen it happen so they don't consider the ramifications.

Joe Biden was a nice enough fella in 2008, but none of you are going to tell me that Biden was anywhere close to the best qualified person to take over if something happened to Obama. That being said - he did have a qualification that is rare nowadays in that he was actually MORE QUALIFIED to be President than Obama was. It's the old Coach Bryant mantra about having no use for a coach unless that coach was smarter than Bryant. And we've had some real doozies chosen in the last 50 years. William Miller (at least Goldwater never tried to hide Miller's ineptitude and admitted he only picked Miller because Miller got under LBJ's skin), Agnew (chosen as part of the Border - not Southern - strategy of Nixon), Eagleton (anyone want a mentally ill Senator with his finger on the nuclear button?), Ferraro, Quayle, and Palin. None of these folks should have gotten even a glance at for the VP slot but ALL were chosen for 'political' reasons that had nothing to do with their ability to lead.

I'll even go so far as to say that the selection of Al Gore was political in the sense that Clinton was trying to make the case that the Democrats were no longer exclusively a bastion of Northeastern liberalism. Gore was a semi-decent selection in terms of getting someone (book) smart, but he was a terrible candidate on his own and a serial exaggerator to boot.

When Gerald Ford ascended to the Presidency without the benefit of even a single vote, he had to choose a new VP. He chose NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a big-spending liberal who would probably be a Democrat nowadays. Ford basically decided to use the 'best qualified' yardstick and so chose a big state governor. Rockefeller was run off the ticket by Southern and Midwestern conservatives who wanted Reagan as the 1976 nominee - never mind that Rockefeller was probably the biggest name and most experienced candidate Ford could have had. The party was veering towards the right and Rockefeller was canned. (Ford probably only won the nomination due to several Reagan mishaps, including his selection of Dick Schweiker, the liberal, as his running mate and his basically saying he wanted to sell off the TVA, which cost him both Tennessee and Kentucky in the primary runs).

Historical footnote: the runner-up to Rockefeller in the Ford selection process was man named George HW Bush. Seriously.

But my point is that we really do NOT take the VP slot seriously as a whole country - we don't. Sure, some of you here may but it's all a balancing act. And tragically, it is going to take the ascendancy of someone like Dan Quayle to the Oval Office to remind this country of that necessity.

The way we choose leaders in this country - based upon the ability to orate but say nothing, to parry your votes in Congress so as to offend nobody, to confuse the ability to raise money with the ability to lead - is an absolute disaster. In a real world serious situation there are maybe 2 Republicans running who would deserve a hearing; Sanders is the only one with any actual experience with the Democrats (Hillary and Bush both are there for one reason - their last names, just like Teddy Kennedy).

The way those same leaders choose their potential successors is an even bigger potential disaster. Even the 'good choices' made in the last several years - Mondale, Bush 41, Bentsen, Kemp, Lieberman, and Ryan - all owe their selections to the need to mollify a constituency in the party. (I'd consider Dole in 76, Cheney, Gore, Edwards, and Biden 'acceptable' choices without going so far as to say they were good or bad; and Gore, too, benefited solely from his name in his early elections). None of these selections were made because anyone looked and said, "This is a person better qualified than I," although the flirtation with Ford in 1980 would have made that argument. Bush was chosen as a result of process of elimination more than anything else (sorta like how Eagleton and then Shriver wound up on the McGovern ticket in 1972).

These politicians START their Presidential runs by spending incessantly to win primaries, barter away the most important decision they make to gain votes to get their way..........and then they get elected and that's all they know and we, the voters, wonder why everyone who gets there is nothing but a skunk who sells out to the highest bidder.

Maybe we should raise the price on stupid decisions earlier in the process.