John McCain's Friends

The man who has more enemies in his own party than any front runner in memory keeps talking about friends.

"Tonight, my friends," John McCain said after the Super Tuesday voting, "we won a number of important victories in the closest thing we've ever had to a national primary."

In what poker players would call a "tell," McCain's use of the expression may reveal more about him than he realizes. At the 2004 Republican convention, after a tribute to FDR, who used the phrase constantly, McCain said, "My friends, we are again met on the field of political competition with our fellow countrymen...But it should remain an argument among friends who share an unshaken belief in our great cause, and in the goodness of each other."

In that speech, McCain was biting a bullet to praise George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who had smeared him so viciously four years earlier that he considered leaving the Republican Party.

"My friends" appears to be McCain's verbal shield against expressing the anger he is famous for in Senate squabbles with members of both parties. During this year's Presidential debates, before launching an attack on Mitt Romney, he would begin with a tight smile, "My friend,..."

Whoever gets the Democratic nomination to oppose McCain should keep in mind an old folk saying, "If you have him for a friend, you won't need an enemy."

Cheney's Bucket of Warm Spit

When I was a kid, John Nance Garner, FDR’s first Vice President, was famously quoted as saying the job “wasn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.” Reporters later revealed he had actually said “piss.”

A former Speaker of the House, Garner had run against Roosevelt for the Presidential nomination in 1932 and, when FDR decided to go for a third term, his own Vice President ran against him and lost.

During that era, Will Rogers said, “The Vice President has the easiest job in the world. All he has to do is get up every morning and ask, ‘How’s the President?’”

Things have changed. Today’s Washington Post begins a five-part series on Dick Cheney, describing him as “the most influential and powerful man ever to hold the office of vice president,” which history may judge as an understatement in the light of ongoing revelations about his secrecy, control and lawlessness.

Somewhere between the stereotype of a Maytag repair man with nothing to do and the picture of Cheney as Darth Vader, there is a reasonable role for the President’s backup as a junior partner in running the executive branch. Working under Bill Clinton, Al Gore came close.

Cheney’s history will complicate the choice of running mate by the ’08 nominees. Voters will be very much aware that they may be picking more than a spare part.