Some 2024 Veepstakes Thoughts

And, a live show announcement!

Welcome back to the This Day In Esoteric Political History newsletter. Today, a quick Sunday dispatch from Jody.

First, a special announcement for those of you in Boston or with friends in Boston — we are doing our first ever live show on Friday, September 13th! Niki, Kellie, and I will be there, along with special guests… we’ll have much more info soon, but tickets are available now!

In the podcast feed today, I decided to re-post an episode we did from our “Veepstakes Week” earlier this year, since we seem to be in the middle of frenzied speculation about who Kamala Harris will pick as her running mate.

For those of you who like to read on a Sunday morning, here’s the mini-essay I offered at the top of the intro.

[Please excuse all typos and misspellings; one of the perks of writing for audio is you don’t have to sweat that stuff too much.]

As I’m recording this, the big political story of the moment is who Kamala Harris will select as her vice-presidential running mate. It’s slated to happen any day now, and somehow during this very unprecedented election cycle, after Biden stepped aside and Harris became the presumptive nominee… we kinda slipped into a couple weeks of pretty familiar Veepstakes.

Speculation about who the presidential candidate will pick as their running mate. And it feels kinda… normal, right? All the various governors being floated, the scuttlebutt about who would provide an edge in what swing state…

As it happens, there’s a pretty long history, at least in modern history, of this. So much so that earlier this year we did a special series on The Veepstakes. In that series, by the way, I learned that the term veepstakes really took off in the mid-80s into the 90s… 1984 had a lot of speculation, and 1992 may have been the most veepstakey of veepstakey elections…

So anyway, we’re going to run the first episode from that series again here, just in case you missed it, or just in case re-listening to it will help you frame this current news cycle.

But I’ll tell you two things I learned from the series, that I’ve been thinking about as I watch this 2024 mini-veepstakes play out. One — it’s kinda shocking how not-vetted so many of the vice presidential picks have been. Inevitably, the nominee makes their pick, and then a couple weeks later news starts to trickle out, people dig up old stories, and it’s like… woah, how did you not know this about the person you just added to the ticket?!

I think we’re seeing a little bit of that right now on the GOP side with the JD Vance pick… and I’m curious what kind of vetting is going on with the Democratic side…. 

Related to that, I’ve been thinking a lot about something Niki says in the episode we’re about to play — which is that really this is the first big test of the presidential candidate’s leadership and management style. Running for president is so different from the job of being president… but selecting a VP does involve a lot of the kinds of things that I do think matter in terms of being a good president. Who do you trust, how do you surround yourself with people who will complement you as you make hard decisions… So I don’t know if the VP pick itself makes a difference, but the process by which the selection is made is a nice indication of the potential president’s management style. And it is, in the end, a managerial position once you’re in the White House.

Oh, one last thing, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it. Listeners who heard the series know that I really did it as an excuse to talk about the story of the Alaskan cruise ship rides where the GOP brain trust fell in love with Sarah Palin. I just love that story, please go track that episode down, it’s just such a perfect little moment in esoteric political history…

But, it does also relate to something that I think we are seeing play out here, which is that with these VP picks, you see the brain trust of a party really fall in love with someone… and then just a little bit later you’re like “wait, what were they thinking.”

Obviously, again, JD Vance comes to mind, but I also am watching Democrats across the country fall head over heels for random governors whose name they didn’t even know two weeks ago, and part of me wonders… let’s see how this plays out…

Okay, that’s it for this special Sunday dispatch. Go check out the full episode in your feed. And be in touch if you have thoughts about the VP race or anything else!

-Jody-

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