Caretakers

     There isn’t much news in the news just now. It’s mainly the presidential campaign, the Olympics, and whoever commits a particularly gory crime. But even the newslessness of the news can be a newsworthy subject here at Liberty’s Torch. Got to work with what you’ve got, don’t y’know.

     The goal of the media is to get and retain our attention. When there isn’t much happening, the job becomes difficult. As politics and the actions of governments are the media’s main fodder, when there’s nothing really impactful happening, reporters must synthesize stories out of less arresting fare. Their gropings can be rather amusing at this point in a presidential campaign.

     Consider this business of vice-presidential nominees. The vice-presidency is a position with nearly no duties nor authorities. The VP is simply supposed to rise at a decent hour in the morning and check the newspapers for whether the president is still alive. If the answer is yes – which it usually is – he can spend his day watching the girls go by. That business about being president of the Senate only becomes important when the Senate is perfectly tied on some subject, which isn’t often. So why are the media agog over the major parties’ selections of nominees for the position that John Nance Garner, FDR’s vice president during his first two terms, called “a pitcher of warm spit?”

     I suppose that’s slightly unfair. Several vice presidents have had to assume the big job with little or no warning:

• John Tyler, upon the death of William Henry Harrison;
• Millard Fillmore, upon the death of Zachary Taylor;
• Andrew Johnson, after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln;
• Chester Arthur, after the assassination of James Garfield;
• Theodore Roosevelt, after the assassination of William McKinley;
• Calvin Coolidge, after the death of Warren Harding;
• Harry Truman, after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt;
• Lyndon Johnson, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy;
• Gerald Ford, after the resignation of Richard Nixon.

     That’s nine out of the forty-nine who’ve held the office. I suppose those aren’t terrible odds, but think about what you’d have to hope for.

     So the essence of the VP position is to act as an understudy, and to be prepared to take the reins in the event of misfortune to the president. Historically, Americans haven’t expected much of a VP who assumes the big job. He’s viewed as a caretaker-in-waiting: one who, in the event of calamity, would do what’s necessary, and little more, until the next quadrennial election. That several vice presidents have gone substantially beyond that maintenance role doesn’t change the nature of the position to which they were elected… or, in the case of Gerald Ford, selected.

     Yet for some time now, the media have labored like Hercules to excite us about the vice-presidential nominees of the major parties. The reason is simple: if the presidential nominees can be easily foreseen well in advance of their parties’ conventions, there’s little else to write about. They must do their best to get us charged up about two men standing for that caretaker position, when neither of them is at all likely to do anything of consequence in the four years to follow.

     It’s more amusing than anything else. It highlights the media’s desperate need to get and retain our “eyeballs.” The number of those eyeballs determines what they can expect from advertising revenue. That determines whether they’ll remain viable – and in our time, when there are so many alternative sources for news and commentary, the professional media’s struggle for viability is never-ending.

     This is not intended to belittle either J. D. Vance or Tim Walz, however much either man may deserve it. It’s just a reflection on what people will do to keep their salaries coming. Those degrees in journalism and communications come at a price that’s not much less than what one would pay for a law degree. The men assigned to collect them are just as relentless as any others. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a tight race in progress for assistant dog-catcher here in Mount Sinai, and I simply must check on the latest returns.