Remember Jack Kemp? Dick Or Joe Will Be Next
The Age
Friday August 25, 2000
SONNY and Cher. Laurel and Hardy. Bobby and Laurie. Richard and Liz. Come back, the lot of you. All is forgiven. This is a wonderful time for double-acts. When last seen, Al and Joe were embracing on a paddle-steamer while George and Dick were heading off to conquer the heartland.
Hang on. Al? Joe? George? Dick? Don't be ashamed if you can't place them. None of them have re-recorded I Got You, Babe or made a hit movie. What we have here are the aspiring leaders of the free world: US presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush and their newly anointed deputies, Joseph Lieberman and Dick Cheney.
Pay attention to those last names. It is likely you'll never hear about one of them again immediately after the US election on November7. For the only thing more forgettable than a vice-president is a failed vice-presidential candidate. You want proof? Who was Bob Dole's running mate in '96?
Few jobs are more significant, yet less important, than the US vice-presidency. The only time people pay much attention to those who hold, or aspire to, the office is when they're nominated. And much of the debate then centres on why somebody else didn't get the job. Presidential candidates choose running mates the way footy coaches make their final team selections - to plug holes and cover weaknesses.
And so the wooden WASP Gore went with the Jewish Lieberman, who spoke out against the personal failings of Gore's boss, Bill Clinton.
Bush, thought to be a man who couldn't spell ``atlas" let alone know where to find Uzbekistan in it, is now hand-in-hand with a nuts-and-bolts Washington operator, Dick Cheney.
Having sung their praises throughout the campaign, whoever becomes the next president will do their darndest to keep Joe or Dick at a distance. That's the way the US system works. Al and George know it, Al especially after eight long years in Clinton's shadow. Joe and Dick know it too. But they're team-players, which is why they were chosen.
And now it's photo-opportunity time. On convention stages; on paddle-steamers; on campaign buses. Smile please, tomorrow you're history.
But while it lasts it's heady stuff. The presidency is often portrayed as the loneliest job in the world, but at this stage of the campaign it is sold as a double act - a variation on Bananas In Pyjamas: P1 and P2. Sometimes, as with LBJ and bumbling Gerry Ford, P2 becomes P1. More often, the mishaps of P2 (Dan Quayle, come on down) are reason to wish P1 the best of health.
The truth is it's no fun being number two in anything, especially politics. The Australian system allows for deputies, but they're rather like air-bags in a car: present but invisible and used only in emergencies. It gets confusing when, as now, there's a Coalition government and there's both a deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Peter Costello, and an entirely separate Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson.
As Gore and Costello have discovered, being a loyal deputy doesn't make people view you more favorably as top banana. They could talk to Prince Charles about this. He's been monarch-in-waiting for so long his subjects now talk openly about bypassing him altogether for his oldest son when the time comes. As his grandmother has just turned 100, that time may be a long way off.
By then, Shane Warne may be deemed to have spent sufficient time in the sin bin and, at last, been appointed captain of the Australian cricket team. The wise men of the game left open this possibility when they recently stripped Warne of the vice-captaincy (because of his alleged vices).
This decision sparked intense debate, much of which ignored the fact that skipper Steve Waugh is very much his own man. Playing C2 to Waugh's C1 can't be much fun. There's room for only one batsman at the striker's end.
Warne has lost a title but, as Sonny and Cher put it so well, the beat goes on.
Alan Attwood is a staff writer.
© 2000 The Age
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