Chip Taylor

If I had some bacon, I'd have some bacon and eggs...

... if I had some eggs.

Mark Daniels takes issue with Tom Friedman's assertion that Bush's second term is "drifting aimlessly" in part because Cheney has made clear that he will not run for president, leaving Bush with no heir apparent.

Mark says that Bush's real problem is the 22nd Amendment:

[Term limts] also hurt second-term Presidents. At the moment they're re-elected, they become "lame ducks," eminently ignorable chief executives. Both Congress and the federal bureaucracy can wait out a re-elected President, knowing full well that there is very little of lasting harm that he can do to them. This is why second-term presidents have been notoriously ineffective, even when two-terms of service were simply a custom. A President may ameliorate the effects of the amendment by touting a successor, as Friedman suggests, but that's far from foolproof. There is no chief executive more able to negotiate with Congress as an equal partner in the legislative process than one who has the look of someone who may be around for awhile.

Read the whole thing. Mark makes some good points about term limits in general. But the 22nd Amendment was in place at the beginning of the Bush administration with no prospect that it would be repealed. As Rumsfeld might say, "you make policy within the Constitution you have, not the Consititution you wish you had." There are any number of ways in which the rules of the game could be different -- rules that would give the president more power.

Whether you agree with his assement or not, Friedman is questioning decisions that Bush has made about factors within his control -- like his choice of running mate.

So assuming that having an heir apparent would be good for the GOP, why did Bush pick a lame duck VP for his own lame duck term?