Eight years ago, there was a national discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of the electoral college system. Various thinkers thrusted and parried back and forth on the merits of a system that could allow someone who did not get the most votes to be president.
Now, eight years later, some facts have come to light concerning a former vice presidential nominee that may kick off another discussion that questions the very system with which we choose the leaders of our executive branch.
Gov. Sarah Palin was not vetted by John McCain. This much is beyond rational debate at this point.
She was not vetted with any manner of stringency by any member of his staff. She was pulled from nowhere and thrown unceremoniously onto the path toward the spot nearest the top of the executive branch.
I don't have to repeat here the myriad items of evidence we now have that point to her startling ineptitude and unreadiness -- better writers than I have already done so.
She is unaware of things that most middle schoolers are familiar with. Basic American civics. The US Constitution. Geography. Science. Sentence structure. (Yes, I am aware that I am writing in fragments, but I'm doing so for dramatic effect. It works for Keith Olbermann.)
This is a person who shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the White House unless it were on a guided public tour. And yet with the system we use now, the vice presidency is one person's choice.
We trust that that person will do the responsible thing and pick someone who could actually govern if circumstances came to that -- the responsibility of actually having to take over the helm being the most important role of the vice president.
We trust. We hope. But as John McCain has shown us, that trust can be violated in such a way that it could put our country in grave danger.
When McCain chose Palin, it is clear that actual governance was the farthest thing from his mind. He was thinking instead of filling stadiums for rallies, launching attacks on opponents, trotting out a pretty face for the cameras, making invective-filled speeches and hopefully driving people to the polls.
My question today is this. Does the fact that our system allows the possibility of a presidential nominee making such a disastrous choice bring our very system into question? Should we consider changing it?
Before the genesis of political parties in this country, the candidate who received the second-highest number of electoral college votes was automatically chosen as the nominee's running mate. This is how John Adams was paired up with George Washington.
This system fell apart rather quickly when Federalist John Adams was paired up with Democratic-Republican and prominent Anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson, leading the two to squabble about the day's most divisive issues.
This led to parties running candidates that they intended to elect as vice presidents in an attempt to game the system.
In 1804, the Twelfth Amendment provided for the separate election of president and vice president.
I don't want to get too wonky here in my suggestions of alternate ways to nominate a vice presidential candidate, so I'll hand this discussion over to the community.
Do you agree that Sarah Palin's nomination has revealed a flaw in our system? And if so, is it a flaw so large as to require exploring some kind of alternative? And if so, what other options are there?