Everyone’s wondering whom Trump will choose as his vice presidential running mate. They should be asking why anyone would want the job.
For all the conjecture and wishcasting about who or what could knock President Biden or Donald Trump out of the 2024 presidential race, their rematch was never much in doubt. Instead, in a measure of just how dispiriting the contest is, the only real question has been a relatively inconsequential one: Who will be Trump’s running mate?
That question should be: Who would want to be his running mate? Trump, after all, rewarded former Vice President Mike Pence for his four years of emasculating sycophancy by abandoning him to the mercies of the mob that wanted to hang Pence on Jan. 6, 2021, and telling an advisor, “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.” Pence, in a rebuke of his own, says he won’t vote for “anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution.”
Pence’s sorry treatment at Trump’s hands apparently is no turnoff, however, for ambitious Republicans coveting proximity to power and possession of Air Force Two, should Trump be elected again. There is no shortage of veep wannabes for the disgraced former president to choose from.
And there’s no shortage of press guessing either. The quadrennial veepstakes speculation has been revving up and will go into overdrive over the next month, given Trump’s talk that he’ll wait to name his choice at the Republican National Convention in mid-July. “I have sort of a pretty good idea,” he teased Fox News on Thursday, and media speculators lately are betting on Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida or North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — MAGA men all, easily meeting the job requirement of being duly obsequious.
The whole speculative exercise is silly and always has been. For evidence, consider how often reporters and pundits have been surprised over the past half-century.
