Vice President McCain
By Paul M. Weyrich
May 26, 2004

In this part of the country, everyone is talking about the cicadas, the black bugs with red eyes that bore their way out of the ground every 17 years to mate and go back in the ground for another 17 years. I can hear the collective call of the cicadas, by the millions, in nearby trees as this is being written.

In Washington, we have a mammal as well as an insect. This mammal appears every four years. He otherwise is quite objective and works hard at being evenhanded - even though he once worked for New York Governor Mario Cuomo. This mammal is from Buffalo, so he has none of the traits non-New Yorkers find so offensive. If you didn't know his political background and you just listened to his questions, you would understand that he is equally capable of grilling the President of the United States as he is the presumptive Democratic nominee Senator John Kerry.

This mammal of which we speak is, of course, Tim Russert, NBC's Washington bureau chief and moderator of "Meet the Press" on Sunday mornings. Tim will take on anyone. Tim doesn't advocate. That is until each presidential year comes around. In 2000, Russert was so taken with the idea of Colin Powell for President, he actually allowed himself to come down out of the rarified atmosphere of his political pedestal to wear a "Powell for President" button momentarily. His colleagues at NBC took to calling him Powell's campaign manager.

Alas, he picked a reluctant candidate. When Powell's wife, who faithfully followed him around the world as he advanced in his career, said she wanted nothing of her husbands' run for the presidency, he dropped out.

Mammal Tim went back to being his objective self...until recently when he began to try to twist Senator John McCain's arm to be the running mate of Senator Kerry. He didn't just ask him for the umpteenth time if he would accept a call from Kerry, he put it in the context of McCain doing his patriotic duty to save the country. Wow! I was almost convinced.

Then I thought about it and said to myself Russert's right. He has himself a reluctant candidate again. McCain keeps pointing out that he is chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign in Arizona (where by the way, McCain is also seeking a fourth term in the U.S. Senate), that he is pro-life, pro-gun, pro-defense and that Democrats are none of these. Still, I think McCain running for Vice President with Senator Kerry is a great idea. First, he would have to give up his Senate seat to do so and just getting him out of the Senate would be worth it, even though the Democrat Governor there would appoint someone dreadful to take his place and the GOP might well lose control. Second, since he and Kerry are fast friends, McCain could serve as a moderating force in a Kerry Administration. My friend, the pollster John Zogby says that John Kerry will be the next President. In such a case, I'd rather have McCain in the White House than in the Senate.

Getting him out of the Senate would also mean he would no longer be the de-facto leader of that small faction of non-conservative Republicans which right now are preventing the Administration from reaching a satisfactory deal on the 2005 budget. Without a real leader, John Chaffee, Susan Collins and a couple of others might fall apart. Right now McCain is the glue which holds them together.

As Vice President it is also doubtful that we would see his smiling face on all of the news shows. Vice President's don't give interviews often, and even then it would probably be on a limited number of issues.

NBC should change its slogan to "All McCain, all the time". No doubt taking their cue from Russert, they dream of ways to include him for on-camera interviews. If he is Vice President, the President and his Chief of Staff and others will determine if and when McCain would be permitted to do interviews.

Back during Richard Nixon's first term, then-Vice President Spiro Agnew gave a series of semi-off-the-record interviews with the Washington Post and others indicating disagreement with the President's China policy. The media played this up as unprecedented: the Vice President vehemently disagreeing with the President on an important foreign policy issue. The truth be known, it was a setup initiated by the White House. The White House was terribly worried about conservatives defecting because of the China policy and a few other issues. By having the Vice President express his views opposite those of President Nixon, it had the effect (as Nixon knew it would) of keeping conservatives in the fold. At least, most conservatives thought at the time, they had someone inside the Administration articulating their views. That was true. Those were really Agnew's views. But the idea of having Agnew go public was no accident.

Kerry might do the same thing on a variety of matters and use McCain as the voice of moderation. In the end, the President would determine what, if anything, McCain would have to say or could be made public. We would not see McCain often.

The more I think of this, the better I like it. With McCain out of the Senate, his colleagues would have the courage to repeal portions of McCain-Feingold, the so-called "Campaign Reform Bill." Right now they don't want to do that because they are afraid to face him, even though many of them are very upset over the way the bill has been implemented. If he isn't there, he can't make trouble.

Yes, with McCain gone we could have more reasonable solutions to mass transit. McCain is anti-rail. The country is pro-rail.

I could go on and on. President Kerry could assign to Vice President McCain things like dealing with North Korea or Venezuela. The much-revered Dwight Eisenhower did that to his Vice President, Richard Nixon.

And heck, candidate Kerry said the other day that - while he will never permit a candidate for the Supreme Court to go forward who isn't approved by the abortion rights crowd - he might be open to appointing pro-life judges to lower courts here and there. Give McCain his due. I think he is genuinely pro-life in his heart. I think he might persuade President Kerry to appoint a few pro-life judges to the Courts of Appeal.

All of this is to suggest that Kerry will want his Vice President to be in the modern mold of an activist who plays a major role in his Administration, the way that Al Gore did for Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney did for George Bush.

On the other hand, he could revert to the sort of Vice President we had under FDR's first two terms. John Nance Garner said the position wasn't worth a bucket of warm spit. Eight years of presiding over the Senate with almost nothing else to do will put you in that sort of mood. LBJ whined that JFK didn't keep him in the loop enough and he almost told him to take his job and shove it, just when Kennedy warmed up to him again and asked him to patch up factions so he could carry Texas. LBJ agreed and hence the fateful trip to Texas, so there is always the chance that you will assume the office. Harry Truman was ill prepared as Vice President. FDR told him almost nothing, yet he became one of our best Presidents.

Anyway, I'm sorry that Russert has a reluctant candidate again. Probably Kerry won't make the call or if he does, probably McCain would say no.

That means mammal Tim would go back in his shell and not burst forth with another idea for the ticket until 2008. Meanwhile the cicadas will be back underground by then for another 13 years. I'm glad Russert is no cicada. I'm getting too old.

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Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.