by Jules Witcover

The political rumor mill, its message now magnified by the Internet, cable television talk shows and all manner of other unmonitored megaphones, has been having a field day on the latest musings about a major job-swap in the Obama administration.

Despite firm denials from all quarters that should know, the notion of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton switching jobs with Vice President Joe Biden in time to put her on the 2012 Democratic ticket has injected itself into the bloodstream of idle political chatter.

The idea had been floating for some weeks when author Bob Woodward, discussing his latest book, "Obama's Wars," with CNN's John King, offered that the swap as "on the table" and "not out of the question," considering Clinton's political strength with "women, Latinos (and) retirees."

The White House was quick to squelch the speculation. Obama's chief political strategist, David Axelrod, said: "There's absolutely nothing to it. The president is blessed to have a spectacular vice president and an outstanding secretary of state. They're both doing great work and he wants to keep them in their jobs."

Clinton herself, asked about the rumor, said: "I don't believe what I read. I have absolutely no interest and no reason for doing anything other than just dismissing these stories and moving on. I think the vice president is doing a wonderful job."

Political history is strewn, to be sure, with denials of rumors that later come to pass -- along with scads that never do. Woodward explained to the Washington Post he had said what he did "because any legitimate vote-getting strategy is always on the table in politics" -- not exactly a claim of having any inside dope.

What makes this particular scuttlebutt seem very unlikely is that both Biden and Clinton have been getting exceedingly high marks, inside the Obama administration and outside it, for their performances in the jobs they're now happily holding down.

Clinton has been credited with a steady role in keeping Israeli-Palestinian talks on life support, and Biden has been a key figure in coaxing reconciliation of rival Iraqi factions to form a coalition government. On the campaign trail, he has been carrying a heavy load, urging a strong turnout of middle-class Democrats for next month's congressional elections.

Beyond that, changing vice presidents in midstream can be a messy exercise. The last time it was done, for the 1976 election, President Gerald Ford buckled to conservative Republican pressure and dropped appointed veep Nelson Rockefeller in favor of Bob Dole, to no avail. They still lost that year.

In 1992, the senior President George Bush was urged by fearful GOP leaders to dump his hapless vice president, Dan Quayle, but kept him rather than seem to acknowledge he had made a mistake the first time. They both lost handily that fall.

Going back to 1956, other vice presidents have been second-guessed but kept on the ticket rather than risk divisive party squabbles. In that year, an Eisenhower cabinet member tried to get his boss to dump Richard Nixon, who resisted a suggestion to take a cabinet post and was reelected.

In 1972, Nixon himself seriously talked to aides about offering Vice President Spiro Agnew a seat on the Supreme Court to clear the way for Nixon's favorite, John Connally. But Agnew, visualizing his own presidential nomination in 1976, declined to step aside. Reelected with Nixon, he was forced to resign in 1973 to escape impeachment and possible jail time for taking bribes as governor of Maryland and later as vice president.

High-level job swapping has not been unheard of in Washington, however. In 1984, just before the landslide reelection of Ronald Reagan, his White House chief of staff, James A. Baker, and his secretary of treasury Donald Regan decided on their own to exchange hats in the second term, and easily sold Reagan on the deal.

In 2008, before Obama chose Biden as his running mate, there was much speculation that Biden as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee might indeed be his choice to be secretary of state -- and for a time, that Clinton would be his running mate. But then was then, and now is now, and rewinding the tape to that arrangement seems pretty far-fetched today.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama

The Feminine Mystique

The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy

The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War

 

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