Riddle of vice presidents and the elusive throne

• The choice of V-P is often of strategic importance to the president.
• 65-year-old Joe Biden is meant to address and redress the displeasing issue of Obama’s inexperience.
• Because the Republican running mate is a woman, she could help McCain become President by attracting and winning over the estimated 13 million women who wanted Democrat Hillary Clinton to be President.

So African vice presidents have been keen to know more about the vice-presidential choices of US Democrat Barrack Obama and Republican John McCain? Good, I have got plenty for them.

“You die, we fly.”

That was the mantra of the team of George Bush senior when he was President Ronald Reagan’s vice president. Why the rather gloomy mantra? I will tell you that if it be a hymn, it is apt and right.

The mantra was coined by Bush senior’s team because the only time they had an opportunity to fly abroad was when some foreign dignitary died. Being too busy with domestic work, Reagan would dispatch his V-P to go and represent him at the funeral.

Now look at it this way; as the holder of the second most important political office in the land, you do not want to be known for representing your boss and country at funerals. But then, you cannot feign sickness when asked to, can you?

Second, staff of the second most important political office in the land do not want to be bored and, if you were V-P, you would not want them to be bored because they are not busy.

But then you serve at the pleasure of your boss and if he/she does not keep you busy, you and staff will be a bit idle.

Therefore, the idea of some dignitary dying outside your borders or shores and you having to fly to sit in or stand in for the boss would excite staff.

Third, often veep is deep in goop. Often you are not appointed Number Two because your strengths will serve the country well. You get the job because your strengths and especially weaknesses – real or perceived - will serve the president beautifully.

In other words, the choice of V-P is often of strategic importance to the president.

President Moi is on record as making it abundantly clear that his Vice-President of more than a decade, Prof George Saitoti, could not lead.

Prof Saitoti was Vice-President because, the former President explained, he was his friend, but he could not trust him with the leadership of the country because leadership is totally different and removed from friendship.

If Saitoti could not lead a cinema queue, surely Mr Moody Awori could lead the country, but as President Kibaki’s Number Two, Uncle Moody was often sent to fight the fires in the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) and clean up when some ministers messed up or carry the can when it came to Anglo Leasing-related security passports scam.

The usually invisible, inscrutable and AWOL (absent without official leave) President Kibaki did nothing to defend his veep when officials of Ford Kenya repeatedly and publicly declared that the V-P’s seat belonged to one of them and not to Awori.

Fourth, if you are V-P you cannot act in a manner likely to suggest that you are smart, let alone smarter than the boss. The accolades belong to the president not to the vice-president.

Well, let us look at Obama’s choice of running mate. Sixty-five-year-old Joe Biden is meant to address and redress the displeasing issue of the Democrat’s inexperience.

When Biden went to Washington as a senator, 47-year-old Obama was not yet a teenager.

Biden is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and therefore a boost to the Obama team because the Illinois Senator is also considered weak in foreign policy when compared to McCain.

This is exactly what the little known Texas Governor George W. Bush the was addressing almost eight years ago when he named experienced and older Dick Cheney his Vice-President.

Now McCain turned 72 on Friday and on the same day he named 44-year-old Mrs Sarah Palin his running mate.

Because she is a woman, she could help McCain become President by attracting and winning over the estimated 13 million women who wanted Democrat Hillary Clinton to be President.

Because she is tough as nails and has run against her own Republican establishment in Alaska and won, McCain hopes she will excite the Republican right as principled and the left as ready to take on and help shake up Washington.

Fifth, a V-P’s next career move is very dependent on her boss’ performance. A disastrous performance by the president will sink the career of the V-P no matter how hard she tries to distance herself from the former boss.

Luckily for Cheney he is not running for president. If he were, he would be hammered by the Democrats for all of Bush’s failures; they would now be his own.

If he were running and won as did Bush the elder, he would find it tough getting re-elected because after 12 years of rule by one party, the fatigue factor and therefore need for change would begin to take centre stage among the populace.

Here at home, irrespective of how the President exits the scene, Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka’s name will be on the next presidential ballot.

His opponents will portray him as the man who denied ODM a decisive victory last year.

This, they will say, was achieved by him abandoning ODM and throwing his weight behind President Kibaki for which he was rewarded with the Vice-Presidency.

The only favourable characteristic about the vice presidency is that if the president dies or is incapacitated, then the V-P would stand a good chance of becoming president.

When this happens the V-P wears a mourner’s face while privately plotting aggressively to ensure that she would not go down in history as the person who served as acting president.

American Vice-President Adam was so frustrated by the job, he said he was in office but not in power! How apt.