Is This Any Way to Select a Vice President?

National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice helps Vice President Joe Biden with a spot on his suit jacket, in a hall outside the Oval Office, Aug. 2, 2013. Robert Cardillo, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Intelligence Integration, watches at right. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

At LewRockwell.com, Pat Buchanan asks if the criteria Joe Biden has set for selecting his running mate is any way to select the Vice President of the United States, or for that matter, the likely 47th President. He writes (abridged):

There is a real possibility that, this coming week, Joe Biden will be selecting the 47th president of the United States.

For the woman Biden picks — he has promised to exclude from consideration all men, black, brown, white or Asian — has a better chance of succeeding to the presidency than any vice presidential nominee in U.S. history, other than perhaps Harry Truman.

First, no white men need apply. Second, no man of any race, color or creed will be considered. Gender rules them out, though every vice president for 230 years has been a man.

Nevertheless, says Biden, this one has to be a woman.

“No men need apply!” automatically eliminated 17 of the 24 Democratic governors who are men, including Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California, and it eliminated 30 of the 47 Democratic members of the Senate who are men.

In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing and protests, pressure has grown on Biden not only to choose a woman but a woman of color, and preferably a Black woman. If that were a criterion, it would eliminate all but a tiny few of the party’s senators and governors.

What national interest impelled Biden to so restrict the pool of talent from which a possible presidential successor would be chosen?

Joe Biden would be the oldest man ever to serve as president. He would enter office with visibly diminished mental capacities. And he has decided to restrict his choice as to who should inherit our highest office by ruling out the vast majority of the most able and experienced leaders of his own Democratic Party.

Is this any way to select someone who could, in a heartbeat, take control of the destiny of the world’s most powerful nation?

Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever