I’ve been reading articles about the pros and cons of Hillary choosing Elizabeth Warren to run as her vice president should she get the nomination Is it better for liberals that she run as veep or stay in the Senate? My answer is that she will have a greater impact as vice president.
In my reading what surprised me was a reminder that she’s 66 years old. Somehow she always struck me as 10 years younger. Like many I thought she might be positioned to run for president in four or eight years. Not that running at 72 would diminish her chances, but if she runs in eight years she’d be 76.
I’ve been catching up on Veep, so I must admit my opinions about the power of the VP might have been influenced by this.
I have to admit that I just started watching the second season of Veep, the HBO comedy show that stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and that this has influenced my opinion about the potential clout of a vice president. Aside from comic turns such as getting groped by the husband of the prime minister of Finland, her vice president, Selena Meyer, manages to exercise a lot of power, often because the never-seen POTUS is disengaged and inept. Think a Dick Cheney to George W. Bush. Of course the dynamic would be the complete opposite if she were a President Warren working under a President Clinton.
Aside from the treasure trove of imagined SNL comedy sketches about back-room cat fights between the two, these strong willed women might be able to become the greatest and most change making POTUS/VPOTUS team in history. And, for progressives, they’d be ours.
Cheney was the dark lord, and will go down in history as such. Elizabeth Warren could become the most influential progressive vice president in history.
Of all the names I’ve seen mentioned, Warren is the only one who came up early on as someone many progressives wanted to see run for president. Undoubtably she will want to be involved in major decision making and also have areas of import that she is in charge of. Given the overlap of her interests with Bernie Sanders’ she would be able to run as Hillary’s Bernie, and function as such in the Executive Branch.
What about losing Warren in the Senate? With Warren as veep, there are other influential progressive senators who will have a lot of impact, including Bernie (assuming he’s not president), Sherrod Brown, Amy Klobuchar, and my state’s own Jeff Merkley.
While balancing the ticket with a Hispanic, something pundits have suggested as good strategy, has its merits, I think a good case can be made for running a true power-ticket, and that would be Clinton-Warren.
Also published on my blog: http://halbrown.org
