Veepstakes part II

Kevin Drum points to this WashTimes commentary about the ongoing scuttlebutt about scuttling FoulMouth from the GOP ticket. From the Times:

Thinking along the same lines, Arnold Beichman of Stanford's Hoover Institution made a strong case for Mr. Bush to replace Mr. Cheney with National Security Adviser Condeleezza Rice in these pages of The Washington Times on July 1.

Said Mr. Beichman, "It is now time to open a new dramatic episode in American history, one that would show the world what our democracy means: the choice of an extraordinarily talented African-American woman to run for president of the United States on the Republican ticket, the party of Abraham Lincoln."

My main reservation against Miss Rice is that she is untested electorally, having spent most of her career as a Stanford political science professor. Also, we know nothing about her views on issues outside her area of expertise, foreign policy. What is her position on abortion, tax cuts or Medicare? Even she may not know since she may never have had any reason to think about these or the thousand other issues on which presidential candidates must have positions.

What no one's saying, of course, is that not only is a sovietologist's foreign policy 'experience' rather worthless in a post-soviet world and she hasn't exactly seemed to be learning on the job, but that putting Condi on the ticket might revive talk of her 'my husb... I mean, President Bush' oopsie reported here.

No one denies that she's probably as good at nannying the incumbent as Unca Dick.