Consequences of The Death of A President
Elections have acquired much of the mass media publicity system used for entertainment, but a ticket is not a "buddy picture." Although the vice presidency has only rarely been an office with real political significance, several times American presidents have died in office, either through assassinations or natural causes. These conditions reveal the merits and failures of having a running mate to balance the ticket instead of calling a snap election, as other countries do.
Abraham Lincoln's running mate, Andrew Johnson, was a southerner who did not share values with the Radical Republicans, so Reconstruction started with Lincoln's point of view being expressed by a southern democrat. William McKinley, an old school pro-business republican, was succeeded by the young, energetic Theodore Roosevelt who actively championed anti-trust laws. Twice in the twentieth century there were vice presidents who followed the heritage of their departed presidents as well as one could expect. Harry S. Truman continued Franklin Delano Roosevelt's policies, and Lyndon Baines Johnson accomplished more in the same general areas than John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In 2008, the selection of the conservative Sarah Palin by moderate senator John McCain damaged the ticket, as people were concerned that the 72-year-old McCain might not live out his term.
Read more about this topic: Ticket Balance
Famous quotes containing the words consequences of, consequences, death and/or president:
“The consequences of our actions grab us by the scruff of our necks, quite indifferent to our claim that we have “gotten better” in the meantime.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular.... War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it.... War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)
“We achieve “active” mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“The future of America may or may not bring forth a black President, a woman President, a Jewish President, but it most certainly always will have a suburban President. A President whose senses have been defined by the suburbs, where lakes and public baths mutate into back yards and freeways, where walking means driving, where talking means telephoning, where watching means TV, and where living means real, imitation life.”
—Arthur Kroker (b. 1945)